In The Shadow Of The Serpent
by Mvctar Avrelivs
Summary: PART TWO OF SEVEN: The Titans and Blackfire must learn to get to grips with each other as Trigon's servant and a human dupe wreak havoc... Rated R for violence. Finished. WARNING: FEMSLASH
1. Memories Of Past Futures

**In The Shadow Of The Serpent**

**Chapter One: Memories Of Past Futures**

Blackfire sat at the hospital bed watching its occupant. She did not know much about magic, or magic beings, but she had personally experienced Raven's healing touch, and knew that the only person that could help Raven out of her coma would be herself.

She ran her hand through Raven's hair, confident that in her comatose state Raven would not notice. Neither would the other Titans; they had gone home long before, even Beast Boy. Blackfire saw how Beast Boy and Raven got along with one another, and for a moment was struck with jealousy-what the hells did Raven see in him?

She sighed, the jealousy disappearing as quickly as it had arisen. Even if Raven wasn't interested in Beast Boy, why would she be interested in Blackfire? As far as Blackfire could see, Raven simply saw in her the potential for friendship, not lo- what Blackfire wanted. Raven just wasn't that sort of girl.

Besides, there were other considerations, Blackfire told herself. For the last time, she added.

In a small, nondescript apartment at the other side of the city, Trigon's servant anxiously paced the floor, cursing with every step taken. The plan was simple, and worthy of the honor that Trigon bestows on his finest: find a human dupe and while using it as a smokescreen, find and capture Raven, carry out the will of Trigon. Plain and simple. Many human plans over their entire history, from small bank robberies to large empires, fell apart because they were too damn complicated. And under no circumstances would one of the Damnati sink so low as to make a human's mistakes.

But then again, you could always count on the Titans to complicate matters.

A soft hissing filled the room. Yesss, the Titansss would pay, one way or another…

Unbeknownst to the both of them, they began reminiscing at the same time, trying to remember the sequence of events that had led them to their destinations…

(scene change)

It was less than a day since Blackfire had officially 'joined' the team, much to the surprise and deep suspicion of the Titans, with the exception of Raven, with whom she shared a slight connection. Despite the endorsement of both Raven and a high-ranking Centauri official, she found herself eating her breakfast alone in the room which once belonged to Terra; not a good sign.

Not that Blackfire cared. She hated silence, but if she had to choose between the silence you get when you're alone or the silence you get when you're in a room full of people who don't like you, then it wasn't really a choice at all, was it?

There was a knock at her door. "Blackfire, it's me," Raven said from behind it.

At first, Blackfire hesitated; she wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone right now, and as far as she was concerned, if Raven wanted someone to talk to, then she had her Titans, didn't she?

Raven, herbal tea in hand, knocked on the door again, but Blackfire still didn't answer. She didn't know what to do in this sort of situation. Normally it was one of the other Titans who handled all the emotional matters. Raven herself preferred to keep out of things like that.

After she had knocked a third time without any answer, Raven moved to leave when the door slid open. "What do you want?" Blackfire asked harshly. "I mean, I'd like to be alone for a while," she said, her voice softening.

"You seemed pretty alone back at breakfast," Raven said softly.

Blackfire sighed, before continuing, "Look, if you want to come in, go ahead. If you want to talk, go ahead. But I'm not guaranteeing anything."

Raven nodded. "I'm not expecting anything," she said.

As she entered, Blackfire asked, "Why do you bother, anyway? It's not as if you'll win points with your friends by being all buddy-buddy with me."

"No I won't, but I'm not here to win points," Raven said, sipping her tea.

"So why are you here then?"

Raven finished sipping her tea before she continued, "That night we rescued my friends, we didn't just rescue them, we rescued _you_."

"Huh?"

"You told me you were tired of running, that maybe you were tired of being the bad girl."

"But I like being the bad girl," Blackfire pouted.

"And running?"

Blackfire sighed, "Well, if you're going to put it that way…"

Raven walked closer to Blackfire as she continued, "I'm willing to lose a few points with my friends if it means it would stop you from running anymore."

Blackfire was silent for a moment. "Why does it matter so much to you?"

"Because it matters so much to the rest of my friends."

"Oh really? Funny way they had of showing it!"

"They just don't know you. I know your sister's forgiven you, Cyborg isn't sure, and Robin wants to be wrong about you."

"And how do you know all this? You read their minds?"

"No, but sometimes…sometimes you don't have to."

"…Beast Boy?"

"What?"

"Beast Boy. You talked about how everybody else felt about me, how does he feel?"

"…He doesn't like you."

"AH-HA!" Blackfire said triumphantly. Then her shoulders fell, and she continued, "Look, Raven, I'll try to get along with your little family, if it's _that_ important to you-"

"Yes it is."

"-but it's going to take some time-no, a_ lot_ of time."

With her mug in one hand, Raven took Blackfire's hand in her own and said, "As long as you like. Just remember, you're not alone."

"No I don't," Blackfire said, grasping tighter, looking into Raven's eyes, "I've got you, don't I?"

For a few seconds the room was silent. Then someone knocked on the door, and the spell was broken. Blushing and struggling to keep her embarrassment under control, Raven said, "I er…I-I better go and answer that."

"Oh…oh yes, maybe you should," Blackfire said, her face flushed as well.

As Raven strode to the door, Blackfire's mind raced. What the hells just happened? Was she...Raven…her and Raven?

_Well, it would certainly help_, a voice in her head said, and was quickly silenced by the memory that cropped up every time the voice had popped up before.

No, not Raven. As a friend, definitely. But no further.

She would not risk going through what she had to go through again.

She would not risk anyone important to her going through that again.

And she had to admit, Raven had become important to her pretty quickly.

(scene change)

Shift adjusted her burnished copper-red hair in the mirror, tying it up into a long, sleek ponytail. She stood in front of the mirror, her emerald green eyes flashing in its polished surface as she shamelessly admired herself. She put on her usual attire, a black jacket over a simple white T-shirt, along with a pair of form-fitting jeans and snakeskin boots. At least, that was what her clothes would have seemed to the casual observer.

She had arranged transport to America unhindered by annoying post-9/11 security from her London flat half an hour after she received her employer's message. She had intended to make another call immediately after that, but what the hell, she had time to get dressed, and primp herself. She liked mirrors, and was well aware she had a reputation to be ridiculously vain. So what? It was true – a modern girl like her had the looks, and it was only her duty to nature to take care of them.

She picked up the phone and dialed. "Uuh…erh…" the voice on the other end answered.

"Fun night, Legion?" she asked.

"Shift? Thass' you? Ungh…" an English accented voice asked blearily from the other line.

"No, it's the bloody Queen! Of course it's me-who else do you know has this number?"

"Dunno-I might of given it to the ladies sleeping here now, God bless these beautiful little angels," Legion answered jovially.

"I really doubt that, considering they're with you. How many?" Shift asked.

"Five, all serving above and beyond the call of duty, if you know what I mean."

Shift could practically hear the leering sneer in his voice. "Whatever. Look, I've just had a call from someone offering a job."

"Lovely. So what's the catch?"

"Catch?" Shift asked innocently.

"I for one, did not get any bloody call about a bloody job, meaning that you alone got the call. So why not just do it and keep the money? No, there's a catch this job's got that you want me to help undo. What's it?"

"Straight to the point, eh? Right then: my employer wants us to grab one of the Teen Titans."

"Teen Titans? That's like the Junior Justice League, isn't it? No way, Shift, we hunt normal buggers, remember? In fact it's one of the things we're famous for, not hunting the other sort."

"Not even for five million pounds?"

"Sorry, it's tempting, but two and a half million quid's just not-"

"Each."

There was a long thoughtful silence at the other end of the line, before Legion said, "Sorry, could you run that by me again?"

"Five million pounds each, Legion," she said, smiling.

There was another long silence before Legion continued, "Oh, well then, which Titan does our employer want?"

"The one called Raven."

"Raven…Raven…she's the witch, right?"

"Think so."

"Ooh, our boss doesn't half mess about, does he? Right then, when do we leave?"

"I've booked the tickets already. Separate, of course"

"Isn't that nice. Next thing you know, you'll be sleeping with me."

"Like hell. Call me when you get to Yankeeland." Shift said, and hung up.

(scene change)

"What were you two talking about in there anyway?" Beast Boy asked Raven as they walked away from Blackfire's room.

"Nothing much."

"Yeah, sure nothing much," Beast Boy mumbled.

"What's your problem?" Raven asked calmly.

"My problem? My problem is that we've got Blackfire right here in the Tower!"

"I'm not stupid, Beast Boy." Raven said, her voice rising slightly now.

"Raye, she's Blackfire! You know, Blackfire!" he said, wringing his hands in the air.

"So was Terra, and you didn't have any problems with her."

"Hey, when she came on board we didn't know she was working for Slade! But we already know Blackfire's a badguy, and we're still letting her stay? Remember what she did the last time she was here? Huh? Remember?"

"Once more, I'm not stupid."

"You're certainly acting like you are!"

"This is pointless," Raven said, turning to walk away.

Or attempted to. "Hey Raven, wait," Beast Boy said, grasping her hand. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you mad or anything, it's just that, well, it's very hard for me to trust people these days."

"Even us?" Raven asked.

"Us? Oh yeah, I mean, 'course I trust you guys," Beast Boy said sheepishly, "But, well, Terra, Robin's Red X gig, that time Slade forced Robin to fight us, I mean, it's hard to trust people, you know?"

"I guess you could see it like that," Raven admitted, her ruffled feathers settling back into place.

Beast Boy smiled. "But I do trust you," he said.

"Thanks, I think," Raven said.

"You're welcome," Beast Boy replied. "Er, Raye?"

"Yes?"

"Listen, I got tickets for all of us to see that new Sky Phantom And The Opera Of Tomorrow movie tonight, wanna come along?"

"I'll think about it."

"Sure. Hey, where you going? Aren't you coming back for breakfast?"

"I don't think so. There are a few things I have to meditate on," Raven said, remembering what had happened between her and Blackfire.

"Okay, no problem," Beast Boy said, walking to the rec room.

"Wait, Beast Boy?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you get a ticket for Blackfire too?"

"Er, sure."

"Thank you."

As they went in their respective directions, Beast Boy did not know whether to jump in the air, kick his heels together and WOOHOO, or whether he should just start chomping up the carpet now.

On one hand, he had finally convinced Raven to go out on a movie date together with him (he had deliberately asked for seats in three different areas of the cinema: Robin and Starfire sit together, he thought they looked real sweet; Cyborg gets to sit in the middle, best seat in the cinema; and he and Raven sit together).

He slapped his forehead lightly. What was he being so worried about? He'd just book another seat in the middle, next to Cyborg, and Blackfire can sit there.

No problem.

Beast Boy sat grumbling in the cinema, his soft drink and popcorn barely touched through the whole movie. On the screen, the Sky Phantom sang about how terrible it was to be a romantic masked figure who was also an international pilot hero.

Blackfire leaned over. "Hey, Beast Boy, if you don't want your popcorn, can I have it?" she whispered.

"mumblegrumblegrumble."

"Thanks."

"mumblegrumblegrumble."

Beast Boy was not having a good time. He should have known that Raven would be as into this movie as much as Cyborg-he for the sci-fi action sequences and her for the Gothic musical sequences.

Blackfire, on the other hand, was thoroughly enjoying herself, not just because the movie was actually quite good, but mainly because of the discomfort it was causing Beast Boy. She did not really have anything against him, but he looked so funny when he was annoyed.

Her thoughts were temporarily put on hold as her favorite character, the Evil Mad Doctor sang about how good it was to be the Evil Mad Doctor (It Feels So Good To Be So Bad, Doo-bee-doo-wop-doo-wop).

(scene change)

A briefcase beside her seat, Shift drank her coffee when a Chinese man in a grey trenchcoat walked through the doors of the Starbucks and made a beeline for her table. "Starbucks, it has to be bloody Starbucks," he muttered.

"What's the matter, Legion? Don't like coffee?"

"No, don't like Starbucks. Bloody idiots haven't got half an idea how to make proper coffee."

"Whatever," Shift said, taking another drink. "Must you always look like that?" she asked, pointing to Legion's clothes.

"What?"

"Grey trenchcoat over black sweater, as well as a black pants and boots ensemble you must have swiped from a Nazi surplus store."

"The next time I tread the Paris catwalk I'll be sure to call you for advice, Shift."

Shift laughed.

"I'm glad to see you're so happy," Legion grumbled.

"Aww, poor wittle Wegion, is something wrong?"

"Yes, something's wrong. I just realized we've got a bit of a problem."

"And that is?"

"We don't know anything about this Raven, or those Titans, except what we read in the papers. How are we supposed to deal with them then?"

"Chickening out?"

Legion snorted. "What, chicken out of five million pounds? Not likely. I'm just saying we should be a little cautious-you know, watch them for a bit, see how they operate. Ignorance may be bliss, but I'm not so sure I want to end up dying happy."

"Don't worry," Shift said, pulling out a file from her briefcase. "Here you see something our benefactor sent me."

"Sent you?"

"It arrived the day after I got the call," she added, placing the file on the table, "It has quite a lot of information on our dear little Raven, known strengths and weaknesses, that sort of thing."

"That's not the same as saying we have all the information we need to stay alive, is it?"

"You know Legion, of all the people on Earth, I thought you'd be the one least afraid to…die, is that the right word?"

"Humans are predictable. We aren't. I'm not going to find myself drowning in shit just because you were full of it."

"Attractive imagery aside, I'll admit you're right," Shift agreed. "I suppose you're right-we'll watch the brats for a few days, then make a move. You'll need time to study this anyway," she finished, handing Legion the file.

"I hated school," Legion said, taking it.

"It shows."


	2. Tests And Results

**Chapter Two: Tests And Results**

At a time when most people were preparing for bed, Mr. Fixit tightened the last bolts on his newest mechanical creation- a self-repairing robot commissioned by NASA, similar in design to the previous Mars landers, but much more reliable, and much cheaper.

Since he had gone straight (thanks to the Titans, and especially Cyborg, who didn't press charges) a year ago, Mr. Fixit had been a very busy man. Offers of work from as far away as Belgium and Russia, even the International Space Station, had almost swamped him, and although the idea of working in many different countries was attractive, he decided to remain here, setting up his own private workshop in the junkyard depths. It was the place he was most comfortable with, and sometimes the Titans would even stop by and check up on him, driving away the loneliness.

So Mr. Fixit decided to work on a purely commission basis, doing work for anyone who required it. So far, judging by the volume of work he was doing, he could not see the difference between that and a regular job.

Placing the Mars Lander in its storage space, Mr. Fixit turned his attention to his next project: a safer antimatter containment device than the one (or rather, the schematic) sent to him by Dr. Vittoria Ventra from CERN. Looking at the design, he could see the problem immediately. It would take some work, and some rather exotic materiel, but he was sure he could make something much more effective.

Suddenly a bright red light began flashing, and a loud alarm began blaring. Mr. Fixit walked over to a video monitor showing the feedback from several security cameras, and saw a shadowy figure walking through the underground passage to his lair with no stealth whatsoever, activating alarms left and right.

Mr. Fixit breathed a sigh of relief. Probably another junk thief-when will they ever learn? He activated one of his minor defence droids, just to frighten off whoever it was.

He watched the droid approach the trespasser, when the figure, seeing the droid coming closer, seized a length of pipe from the ground and leapt on top of it, where he plunged the pipe into the droid's control center.

Mr. Fixit drew his breath sharply. This was no ordinary scrap thief. He activated a few more droids, ones made out of sterner stuff, and sent them after the interloper. He watched as they proceeded toward the intruder, but before they could do anything, another group of shadowy figures emerged and also began attacking them.

"That's it," Mr. Fixit said to himself out of annoyance, and a little fear. Fear that was amplified when he caught a glimpse of what was just outside his lab. What appeared to be a Chinese man in a grey trenchcoat was attaching something to the door with duct tape, and even from the distance the camera was filming, Mr. Fixit gasped as he saw the wired plastic explosive.

Realizing too late that the intruder had probably snuck in much earlier, and that the alarms were probably to draw the attention of any security the intruder missed, Mr. Fixit barely managed to find some cover from behind a hurriedly upturned metal table as the explosion blew the doors to his sanctum off, and Legion strode in through the smoke and debris.

Grabbing Mr. Fixit roughly by the throat, Legion proceeded to throw him against a stack of spare parts. "Now, you damnable creature, the robots' controls, where are they?" he snarled.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Mr. Fixit said through the pain.

Legion pulled out a pair of black-bladed machetes from under his trenchcoat. "The controls for those fiendishly clever constructs outside that I so admire, there, clear enough for you?"

"Burn in hell!" Mr. Fixit spat.

Legion merely smiled as he brought one machete down on Mr. Fixit's arm, slicing it off cleanly at the shoulder. Kneeling now, he held the other machete to Mr. Fixit's throat. "Controls, please? See, I asked nicely," he whispered.

"I don't know who you are, but I'll never allow you to control my machines," Mr. Fixit said defiantly. Thankfully, the arm was a mechanical construct, but although he did not feel any pain, the energy leakage through the stump could be dangerous.

"You won't? Oh well," Legion said cheerfully, "it would have been too much work, anyway, controlling an army of machines. What can I say? I'm lazy."

With that, Legion walked over to the control panel and stuck his machetes into it, dragging them across the metal surface, leaving deep gashes sparking electricity. Seeing Mr. Fixit's expression, he said, "Obsidian blades- it's a kind of volcanic rock," he smirked. "Personally, I find any day where you learn something new to be rather fulfilling, don't you?"

"The droids," Mr. Fixit gasped, feeling his systems reaching an 'emergency' phase, "they'll go berserk!"

"And is that such a bad thing?" Legion asked, placing his machetes back in his trenchcoat.

"They'll rampage through the city! No-one would be able to control them!"

"Again, is that such a bad thing?"

"Your friends outside…" Mr. Fixit said, almost too weak to continue.

"I don't think you know this, Mr. Fixit: I'm not the sort of person to care about what few friends I have," Legion said, walking out the door.

Mr. Fixit crawled over to the wrecked console. Miraculously, most of the communications equipment had not been touched. He pressed a button.

"This is the Titans Tower," Cyborg's voice said from the console speaker.

"Help…me," Mr. Fixit managed to say, before collapsing on the ground.

"Mr. Fixit? Mr. Fixit?" Cyborg shouted from the speaker.

But Mr. Fixit could not hear him.

Listening from just outside the door, Legion smiled. Soon, the Titans, being the noble fools they were, would have to respond.

And after that, a little battlefield analysis.

And after that, Raven.

And after _that_…well, he had no intention of sharing ten million pounds with anyone.

"Hey guys," Cyborg called from the doorway. "I just got a call from Mr. Fixit, sounded real bad."

"How bad?" Robin asked. Starfire, who had been lying down on his lap, sat up sharply.

"Real bad. He barely got two words out before he went silent."

"What, the line go dead?" Beast Boy asked, his bowl of chocolate syrup almost finished, spoon halfway to his mouth.

"No, 'cos I heard explosions in the background."

"Is Mr. Fixit-" Starfire asked.

"I hope not," Cyborg replied.

"Well, what are we waiting for? Titans, go!" Robin shouted.

"Wait, where is Raven and my sister?" Starfire said.

"They went out to the mall on some bonding trip," Beast Boy said disgustedly, "Heck, Raven wants Blackfire to bond with all us. Personally, I don't see me singing Kum-ba-ya with her anytime soon."

"Bonding? That doesn't sound like Raven." Cyborg said.

"Whatever it is, we'll tell them to meet us on the way," Robin said. "For now, we have a job to do."

"C'mon."

"No."

"C'mon."

"No."

"C'mon, just try it."

"You're doing this just to annoy me, aren't you?"

"Aww, you're no fun, Raven," Blackfire said, placing the tube top back on her arm, along with a leather jacket and pair of pants. "Are you like this when you go shopping with my sister?"

"Your sister does not try to make me look like Britney Spears."

"Britney Spears? Who-oh right, Britney!" Blackfire said as recollection dawned. "Now there's a girl with some fashion sense."

"Fashion means clothes."

"Says you."

Raven was about to respond when a gem on her belt started glowing. Taking it out of its socket, she saw reflected in it Robin's face. "Yes, Robin?"

"Raven, we got a distress call from Mr. Fixit and we're going to check it out. Meet us there ASAP."

Raven nodded and Robin's face faded from the gem.

"Is this important?" Blackfire grumbled.

"Maybe."

"More important than shopping?" Blackfire asked. Just then, on the televisions on display at an electronics store across them displayed "Sardi Carr, reporting from junkyard, where a large number of large robots appear to be destroying anything in their path-"

"Sardi, look out!" said a voice from behind the camera.

Sardi looked back, just in time to duck a large car thrown from off screen. The cameraman turned to reveal a large crablike behemoth with a single claw taking up another car and fling in the cameraman's direction. The camera dropped and the screen filled with static.

"Yes, more important," Raven said, launching herself upwards, with Blackfire in close pursuit.

"Hey, you didn't pay for that!" an irate store clerk yelled, as she saw the two go.

In the air, Raven noted Blackfire's stolen goods with disapproval. "You're not giving those back, are you?"

"Raven!" Blackfire said in mock indignation, "Are you accusing me of stealing these? You know I'm one of the good guys now!" she finished with a betrayed pout.

"Where are you going to put them?" Raven asked, not in the mood for an argument.

"I don't know, maybe I'll ask Beast Boy to carry them. There have to be animals on Earth with pouches."

The neighborhoods around the junkyard lay in ruins, the National Guard and police proving ineffective against Mr. Fixit's machines. Beast Boy (in eagle form) and Starfire were the first to arrive, followed by Cyborg and Robin in the T-Car.

"Man, oh man," Beast Boy said as he surveyed the destruction. "What was Mr. Fixit doing with these things?"

"I don't know, but- watch out!" Robin shouted.

Beast Boy turned, and taking the form of a cheetah, ran out of the way as a gout of flame from what appeared to be a man-sized four-legged flamethrower melted the asphalt where he had stood just moments before.

The machine took aim a second time, but as he attempted to run away again, Beast Boy found himself covered in dark energy as twin bolts of violet energy struck the fuel droid dead center.

"Having fun yet, boys?" Blackfire asked as she landed, accompanied by Raven and a very grateful Beast Boy.

"Not half as much since you two arrived," Cyborg said, trying to clear the ringing from his ears.

"What happened?" Raven asked.

"No idea, but it seems Mr. Fixit's in trouble one way or another," Robin said. "Alright, here's the plan: Cyborg, you and Star go check up on Mr. Fixit, while the rest of us take the robots down! Beast Boy, you help evac any civilians still trapped here, got that?"

"Easy enough for even Beast Boy to understand," Blackfire said, to Beast Boy's scowl.

"Right. Titans, GO!"

High above them, from the sixth floor of a book conservatory, Shift adjusted her video recorder's scope. Below her, Legion was on the ground, on a grass-covered hill behind a white fence, using the latest in stolen spy technology to record what the Titans were saying from a distance. Nothing was to be left to chance.

Raven was to be hers, and as for Legion and his money…well, was a man in that fashion wooed? Was a man in that fashion won? She'd keep him, but she would not keep him long.

Trying to ignore the sounds of battle behind them, Starfire and Cyborg proceeded into Mr. Fixit's lair. Despite having been down here quite a few times, and despite the fact that he and Mr. Fixit had become good friends since their first meeting, Cyborg wasn't able to shake the fear that came upon him every time he did so. Some memories were just too hard to dislodge.

Starfire, on the other hand, normally felt quite welcome here. She knew Mr. Fixit, not as an evil man, but someone who was misguided, in the truest sense of the word.

In a way, he reminded her so much of her father.

"Mr. Fixit? Mr. Fixit?" she shouted, to no response.

"Hmm, I guess nobody's home," Cyborg said, when the sound of clanking gears drew his attention to a group of machines clanking slowly towards them.

"Cyborg?" Starfire asked uncertainly.

"Fixit first," he said.

"If you say so," Starfire said. Taking Cyborg up by the arms, she lifted him up and carried him in the direction of Mr. Fixit's lair, easily dodging the slow-moving monstrosities clattering themselves towards them.

Outside, it was a much harder situation for the four Titans still above. Robin barely managed to avoid a swipe from the 'crab', a split second before it ripped through the road, exposing the sewer beneath. In a burst of inspiration, Robin took out some explosives from his belt, but instead of flinging them at the road, he leaped onto the crab's back, and waited for the moment the crab raised the claw to grab the interloper. When it did, Robin flung the explosive pellets into the joint at the base of the claw.

Jumping away from the explosion, he didn't see the massive claw smash into the top of the crab, smashing through into the inside. He did manage to see the force of the claw's fall drive the crab into the already stressed road, sending the crab crashing into the sewer beneath, where part of it exploded.

While all that was happening, Raven found herself surrounded by a horde of humanoid builder droids, all firing iron rivets at her from launchers mounted in their arms. If it weren't for the shield she erected around herself, the droids would have ripped her apart. The fact that they would have ripped each other apart as well was of no comfort at all to Raven.

Suddenly, the firing stopped, just as the sound of the explosion when Robin's explosives detonated rocked the area. Raven barely heard it as she saw the reason the droids stopped-they were pausing to reload their rivet launchers. Raven realized that if there was a time to act, it was now. Drawing in all her reserves of energy, she concentrated on the semicircle of droids in front of her.

Suddenly, bits and pieces of them glowed with darkness; namely the nuts and bolts that held them together. Raven flung her hands, also glowing with her dark energies, behind her. The nuts and bolts of the droids in front of her flew apart and flew behind her; as the droids in front fell apart, the ones behind were ripped to shreds at the same time the crab fell into the sewers.

Blackfire wondered why she was doing what she was doing. After all, she didn't exactly consider holding off the aerial portion of Mr. Fixit's army 'having fun'. The thought was temporarily shelved as a horde of little flying buzzsaws with little red flashing lights flew up towards her, each giving off an ominous 'beep, beep' as they approached her.

Blackfire managed to pick off the first wave with ease, but as even more flew toward her (_where were they coming from?_ Blackfire thought to herself) she realized that she would not be able to fight them all off.

Then she saw Raven surrounded by rivet-firing droids, especially where the droids' nuts and bolts suddenly glowed with Raven's dark energies. Correctly guessing what Raven was going to do (it was what she would do, after all, if she had Raven's powers), Blackfire flew at top speed downwards. She knew that if her timing was even slightly off, she stood a good chance of being shredded by bits of flying metal, but if she tried to stay and fight, she would be shredded by bits of flying metal anyway.

And besides, Blackfire had decided a long time ago that you truly live only when you risk death.

For a moment, as she saw the ground speed up toward her at near-impossible speeds, doubt flashed in her mind. Doubt that swiftly disappeared as she let the sensation take over her, as she made a sharp turn to avoid crashing on the ground and flew on onwards. She did not even notice as the first buzzsaw was destroyed by the flying cloud of debris, followed by the rest of them as they flew blindly to their destruction.

Meanwhile, Cyborg and Starfire reached Mr. Fixit's private workshop. "Cyborg, the doors," Starfire said, indicating the wreckage that was once the entrance.

"Yeah, Star, I see them," Cyborg said. Both of them felt a strange mixture of guarded relief and creeping dread. Guarded relief, that Mr. Fixit did not seem to be behind the attack, at least not obviously, and creeping dread that whether or not he had been behind the attack, something terrible had happened to him.

Entering the room, Starfire was the first to find that horribly, they were half right.

"Mr. Fixit! Mr. Fixit! Oh no…Cyborg!" she called, finding Mr. Fixit's motionless body next to the wrecked communications console "Is he-please don't let him be-" Starfire cried, too distraught to even say it.

"No, he ain't," Cyborg said, relief entering his voice as he tapped a few buttons on his arm console. "His systems have entered him into some kind of suspended animation mode. He's alive, Star, he's still alive."

The sound of machines outside reminded the two of them that there was a slow moving horde of security droids moving toward them. In the small confines of the room, Starfire could not maneuver, nor could Cyborg use his more powerful weaponry, just in case he brought several tons of junk crashing down on them.

A fight would be suicidal, but it seemed that the two Titans had no choice, when Cyborg had an idea. Taking out a small wire from his arm, he found the connection port where Mr. Fixit normally recharged himself. Opening the port's panel, Cyborg attached his own wiring to Mr. Fixit's.

"Cyborg, what are you doing?" Starfire asked him as she saw him do this.

"Mr. Fixit's the only guy who could stop those things, problem is he's asleep, so I'm giving him a little juice to wake him up," Cyborg said.

The jolt he felt as the loss of power hit him was greater than he had expected. Obviously the damage to Mr. Fixit was greater than it seemed. Mr. Fixit's eyes slowly, painfully slowly, opened.

"Cy…Cy,borg," he whispered. "The…my…robots, we, have to stop, them," he gasped.

"You got my vote on that," Cyborg said, trying to keep focus.

"Cyborg, they are here!" Starfire screamed, as she launched several starbolts at the approaching horde.

"Star, the damage to Mr. Fixit's worse than I expected; I'm barely staying awake myself," Cyborg said. "You gotta disable the machines."

"But I don't know what to do! And what if the robots reach us before I'm finished?"

"I will give you directions," Mr. Fixit said, sounding marginally stronger now, "and we must hope you're quick."

It was not Beast Boy's day. He found himself in an abandoned basement, filling up with the smoke of countless fires, facing what appeared to be a rapidly spinning upright metal pole with two small wrecking balls attached to it rolling towards him on tank tracks. Tank tracks! Who throws away tank tracks?

And to make matters worse, rubble had covered most of the entrances, and it would have taken far too long to dig himself before the machine reached him. The clinching factor was that if he morphed into any of his larger forms, he would bring the building down on himself. The fact that it was on fire as well didn't help matters.

And he hadn't even found any survivors to rescue before this robot cornered him, just a small baby doll 'That Really Cries!', the reason he was down here in the first place. That was his luck for you.

Outside, the situation for the other three Titans was getting steadily worse. Blackfire was covered in cuts from the buzzsaws that survived, while Raven's head was exploding from the amount of mental effort she was making in trying to both hold off other robotic assailants, while Robin felt his own energy reserves slowly running out. Soon, the three of them found themselves pushed steadily closer by the still-sizeable remnant of Mr. Fixit's machines.

In Mr. Fixit's sanctum, Starfire had, on Mr. Fixit's command, opened the control panel by simple dint of ripping off its wrecked cover.

"Now, Starfire, look for a white wire, see if it's still undamaged," Mr. Fixit commanded.

Starfire looked into the tangled mess of wiring, all too aware that the robots outside were proceeding ever closer. "I see a white wire, but it's cut through," she said despairingly.

Mr. Fixit cursed under his breath. "Very well then, can you see a blue wire?"

"Which one? Which one?" Starfire asked, panic-stricken.

"The third one from the top."

"Third one, third one, er, er-"

"Calm down Starfire, third one from the top, just like the man said," Cyborg told her, in a voice tired but firm.

Starfire located the wire, and pulled. Just then, some unseen force seemed to enter the robots, and they advanced faster.

"Starfire! You increased their security level! Third wire! Third wire from the top, I said! Third! Put it back!" Mr. Fixit said loudly.

Starfire looked back at the console, where to her horror, she saw that in her haste, she had pulled the wire clean out. There was no way she could put it back now.

"I can't put it back!" she screamed.

"What do you mean, you can't put it back?" Cyborg shouted in a voice containing a mixture of shock, rage and fear.

"I can't put it back!" Starfire shouted in the same tone of voice.

Mr. Fixit tried to ignore the argument, the advancing robots, and his own fading consciousness as best he could as he tried to think of a solution.

"Raven, watch out!" Blackfire said, as she blasted a flying buzzsaw that was trying to decapitate her friend. For some reason, the machines seemed a lot more ferocious. Suddenly she ducked as Raven fired a dark bolt of energy over her.

"What was that-oh," she said, as she heard, then saw, a humanoid robot with a chainsaw for an arm fall, a gaping hole in its 'head'. "Thanks," she said

"You're welcome," Raven answered. All of a sudden, Robin's body came flying out of nowhere, to be caught by Raven in a dark net.

"Thanks," he said.

"You're welcome," Raven said. Then she noticed Blackfire staring at something behind them. She turned, and saw a giant hammer on wheels proceed toward them. Looking behind Blackfire, Raven and Robin saw a group of spindly humanoid droids wielding sharp tools proceed toward them. In the direction where Robin was thrown from, what appeared to be an ogre with too many arms thundered toward them.

Blackfire felt tears running down her cheeks. This wasn't the way she wanted to die, this wasn't how it was supposed to end. Although she would have been loath to admit it to anyone, she wanted to spend her last days on a faraway planet somewhere, somewhere no-one would ever find her, in the arms of someone she loved-

_-her arms-_

-and would love her back. Not like this, covered in blood and sweat and tears, flames and her murderers among her primary companions.

Perhaps Raven sensed some of this, as she said, "Blackfire, I'm not strong enough to fly, but you are. Get away while you still can."

Blackfire turned to her. She realized she was so caught up in her self-pity, her weakness, that she had forgot that other people were going to die there as well.

And while it wasn't the same, she knew that at least part of her dream had come true. She was going to die with someone she loved. So what if Raven did not love her back? Life's never as you dream it, and besides, not only did she had too much emotional baggage to make Raven carry as well, but Raven was probably not that sort of girl.

Blackfire wished she could tell Raven that, tell Raven many things, but all that she would allow to come out was, "Are you kidding? This is too much fun." Then, as a buzzing and beeping filled the air above her, she added, "Besides, what would be the point?" indicating the flying buzzsaws above her.

In the basement, Beast Boy tried to avoid the whirling metal globes as best as he could, when one of them knocked a concrete chunk from a pillar into Beast Boy, sending him smashing into another concrete pillar.

In a daze, Beast Boy saw another robot come in, this one looking like a metal spider with a crooked leg sticking up from its head.

He wondered how it got in when he saw the tip of the extra leg glow and after a delay, suddenly launch a laser bolt at a piece of concrete. It scuttled across to him, tip glowing, as the wrecking ball machine came ever closer.

A similar situation was taking place in Mr. Fixit's lab as the security droids came ever closer, Starfire launching starbolt after starbolt at them, obvious to all that despite her efforts, they would all be overwhelmed soon, when Mr. Fixit was hit by an idea so blindingly obvious that he would have literally kicked himself had he the energy.

"Starfire, the console!"

"I can't put the wire back! I told you!"

"Forget the wires! I want you to destroy the console!"

"Destroy it? Won't that make things worse?"

"Worse than things are now?" Cyborg groaned.

"Just do as I say, Starfire!" Mr. Fixit commanded.

"But what if I make a mistake?"

"STARFIRE JUST DO IT!" Cyborg shouted as he felt consciousness fade.

Turning her attention from the advancing robots, Starfire took aim just as one of the security 'bots raised its arm in a fist to smash down on her.

Raven, Robin and Blackfire stood back to back, ready to make their last stand against the robots, all bathed in a hellish glow.

But it was Beast Boy who could have told them a thing or two about hell, as two metal demons advanced slowly toward him, one preparing to scourge him with iron, the other about to burn him with infernal light.

It was at that exact moment that Starfire's bolt hit home, blowing the console apart.

For one heartbeat, the security droid seemed to be unaffected as the arm grew ever higher, as did its brethren. Then, arm raised high above its head, it stopped for another heartbeat, and then slowly toppled over backwards. Behind it, the slow advance ground to a halt.

Using the last of her strength, Raven erected a shield just long enough to protect her and her friends from the falling buzzsaws, which ricocheted off the shield into the now halted horde of 'bots.

In the basement, the spider's red light seemed to grow even brighter, then rapidly dimmed. The wrecking ball machine's weapons spun to a stop. When it did, Beast Boy got up slowly. He would go up to the surface, but there was something he had to do first. He walked over the baby doll, morphed into a lion, and mauled it like a chew toy. When it was reduced to an unrecognizable mass of plastic shreds, he proceeded in a stately walk befitting the king of beasts, up to the surface.

Walking through the wreckage, Robin and Blackfire who was carrying a tired and headache ravaged Raven in her arms found themselves assisted by the members of a grateful police and fire department who had stayed on to fight the mechanical host. Miraculously, there had been no deaths reported yet, as the robots had seemed to focus on pure destruction instead of directly harming people, at least those who didn't fight back.

A group of firemen, pulling away at some rubble, found themselves surprised by the emergence of a green lion, who quickly changed into Beast Boy. After asking them for directions, he met up with his friends, walking in the direction of the junkyard.

"Hey guys, how are y-Raven? Raven! Blackfire, what did you do to her?" he shouted.

Blackfire, quite calmly, placed the semi-comatose Raven on a nearby bench before walking over to Beast Boy, who quickly backed off. "What did I do to her? Why, let's see, I saved her life and stayed on with her even though I did not need to, because for some crazy reason, she thinks we're friends, oh, and let's see, oh well, apart from that, nothing. So, my dear Beast Boy," she continued, still calm, "shut the frell up before I rip out your jhorblocks and shove them up your-"

"That's enough," a tired sounding Robin said, sitting down next to Raven. "We've had enough fighting for one day."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Blackfire said, still gazing at Beast Boy, her eyes glowing now.

"Are we interrupting anything?" an exhausted Cyborg said, carrying an unconscious Mr. Fixit on one shoulder, followed by Starfire.

"Oh, no, nothing at all," Blackfire said, as she turned to Cyborg, her eyes back to normal again. "So, how did you and Starfire fare?"

"We fared very well, sister," Starfire said. "We found Mr. Fixit and we know that he was not guilty of the destruction here today! Isn't that wonderful!"

"You're forgetting the most wonderful thing that happened, Star," Cyborg said, smiling.

"Oh, and what is that?" Starfire asked, bewildered.

"The way you saved all our butts by destroying that console?" Cyborg prompted.

"Oh, well, Mr. Fixit helped. He was the one who told me what to do," Starfire said in honest modesty.

Robin rose from the bench and caught Starfire in a tight embrace. "You're amazing, Starfire," he whispered.

"Robin," Starfire said, blushing, "The others are watching us."

And indeed they were. Beast Boy and Cyborg were watching them with looks that were a combination of wistfulness and knowing mirth, although an observant person would have noticed Beast Boy's eyes darting towards Raven once or twice, who had turned to lie on her side so that she could see what was happening better, a smile seeming to ghost her lips, while Blackfire simply raised a knowing eyebrow.

"Let them watch," Robin said, eyes closed as he continued his embrace and felt all the tiredness in him evaporate.

After a moment, Starfire, tentatively at first, returned the embrace. For a moment, just for that moment, the world was perfect, not just for Starfire and Robin, but for all the Titans.

"Come on, you two," Cyborg said quietly after a while, reluctant to break the mood, "we gotta take this guy to a hospital," indicating the still-unconscious Mr. Fixit in his arms.

Robin pulled away from Starfire, not a bit reluctantly. "I guess so. Come on, we'll take the T-Car."

Holding hands, Robin and Starfire sat in the T-Car's back seat, the unconscious Mr. Fixit across their laps doing nothing to break the spell, Raven resting in a reclined passenger seat, with Cyborg driving while Blackfire provided an aerial escort.

Beast Boy, on the other hand, was following them as a kangaroo, a female form no less, a tube top, leather jacket, and a pair of leather pants in his pouch. Considering what Blackfire could have done to him tonight, he did not intend to make her angry, in spite the fact that he felt like a fool.

"Did you get all that?" Shift asked as she walked toward Legion, standing next to some burning wreckage.

"Hmm, what? Oh yeah, I got it all, 'cluding the bits with Cyborg and Starfire. Cor, but that wasn't half difficult."

"What do you mean?"

"Mad robots walking everywhere, Starfire shooting like a blind man with a machine gun, it's a wonder I got anything at all!"

"And what about up here? You get all that?"

"Most of it, yeah. The robots were a bit noisy, and there were more explosions than a Schumacher film, but I managed to get some good stuff. David Attenborough would be pissing in his dinosaur skin boots with envy if he could do half the things I managed."

"Your knighthood's in the post. What's the matter, Legion? You seem a bit more cheerful than usual."

"Well, all these fires, chaos, destruction, it reminds me of home." To Shift's incredulous look, Legion said, "I live in Soho."

"Ah," she said as clarity dawned.


	3. Know Your Enemy

**Chapter Three: Know Your Enemy**

Raven came back to the Titans Tower infirmary, cup of herbal tea in hand, her head starting to clear. At Cyborg's insistence, Mr. Fixit had been given recharging priority, and he (Cyborg) sat in a seat next to the bed. Despite the fact that he must have been much more tired than he looked, however impossible that might have been, Cyborg still wore a look of triumph on his face.

On a nearby couch, Starfire, her arms around Robin as one of his own arms encircled her shoulder, rested her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed in contentment. Robin's own head rested on hers, his eyes shut and as at peace as hers was.

Beast Boy walked in, a bag of tofu chips in his hand, munching, looking more at peace with himself than he had been since Terra went. He went over to check on the recovering Mr. Fixit, and spoke to Cyborg about minor matters, probably the latest game or cartoon on, the feeling of doom that hung over them but less than an hour hence quickly evaporating.

Tonight was rough, no doubt about that. But seeing her friends, her family like this, gave her a strange combination of sensations, of peace, of ease, but always lurking somewhere behind, feelings of loneliness and yes, jealousy, that she could never truly experience what they were going through.

Loneliness…

"Where's Blackfire?" she asked.

At the sound of her name, the look on Beast Boy's face immediately changed. "Last I saw her, she said she was going up to the landing pad. What? _Whaat?"_ he asked, seeing the look Raven gave him. A moment later, she walked out.

"All right, what was the argument about?" Robin asked in resigned ease, opening his eyes.

"Argument? What argument?"

"Beast Boy, I know a day is not enough time to get to know a person, but maybe you have to give Blackfire a chance."

"A chance? Dude, don't you remember what happened the last time she was here?" Beast Boy said, almost shouting.

"Raven seems to trust her," Cyborg said slowly, his tiredness evident. "And I trust Raven,"

"Well, maybe Raven's wrong!"

"She wasn't wrong before," said Starfire, discreetly pushing a lock of hair from her face.

"What do you mean?"

"Terra," she replied quietly.

Beast Boy was silent for a long time. He started to say something, but paused to say something else. "She was wrong," he finally settled.

"But," Robin tried to point out, "Raven _did_ think-"

Beast Boy cut him off in his tracks, suddenly exploding with anger. "SO _WHAT_? So _what_ if Terra was working for Slade? Raven thought she was evil, but she wasn't! Terra was – Terra was …" his voice grew quiet and choked, as he struggled to find the right words.

Finally he said, "Terra was one of us. Blackfire isn't. I thought you guys _knew_ that. I thought you guys would understand." He got up to leave the room.

"Beast Boy," Starfire coaxed, getting up to follow him.

"Leave me alone. Just – just leave me alone," Beast Boy said, motioning for his friends to stay away, before he started walking in the opposite direction Raven took.

For better or worse, Raven did not hear any of that, walking up the stairs to the landing pad, to where she herself often sat in meditation.

Tonight, she found Blackfire, sitting down with her head resting on her knees, arms around them. "Blackfire," she said.

"Raven? Didn't notice you coming up," Blackfire said, her mind obviously on other things.

"What happened?" Raven asked, as she too sat down.

"What do you mean?" Blackfire asked, playful innocence all of a sudden.

"Between you and Beast Boy," Raven insisted.

Blackfire's teasing air disappeared as she continued, "Nothing."

In the loud silence that followed, Blackfire said, "Well, what do want?"

"To talk."

"Hey, guess what? We're talking! Wow!" Blackfire said, placing her hands on her cheeks and her mouth in a wide, open smile.

Raven simply sat silently, looking directly at Blackfire. She had known her for little more than a day, but it was enough time to become accustomed to Blackfire's tendency to cover up what she deemed 'weaknesses' with flippant, often sarcastic humor or their relevant actions.

Raven did not know which hit closer to home; the fact that she could understand why Blackfire did so, that it was simply a mirror image of what Raven did, or the reason behind it: that it was nothing more than a form of emotional self-defence.

Or rather, she admitted to herself reluctantly, emotional cowardice.

And then the guilt hit her as she realized she was making Blackfire go through what she was too afraid to face.

"Never mind, Blackfire," Raven said, getting up. "If you don't want to talk about it, it's alright."

Blackfire got up as well, her rage evident. "No, I don't, and do you know why? It's because every time we talk, we end up talking about me. Oh, let's talk, Blackfire! Let's talk about how you feel, let's talk about why you don't have any friends, let's talk about talking about talking! Yeah, let's talk, Blackfire! I want to know all about you! Just don't ask me about me, because the minute I tell people about how I feel, I'll probably explode or melt, or maybe just _drop dead_!" she finished, before sitting down again, scowling into the night sky.

For a moment, Raven felt angry. How dare Blackfire speak to her like that? If it weren't for her, none of this would have happened! If she hadn't come to Earth on her mission of vengeance, if the Centauri Lord Caretaker had been less merciful, if Raven had been less accepting of her-

-if she had not just repeated Raven's own thoughts with different words and the tone of voice it deserved, if she had not made Raven aware of just how much Raven's aloofness hurt both of them… "I'm sorry, Blackfire," Raven said quietly, sitting down again.

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

"What's that again? I can't _heear_ you," Blackfire said.

Raven did not rise to the bait. "I said I was sorry," she repeated, as quietly as before.

Blackfire turned to Raven, intending to tease her further, but when she saw Raven's eyes starting to mist over, she decided that maybe enough was enough. "Yeah, well, just remember I'm not your pet psychiatric experiment, okay?"

For a moment, the only sound that could be heard was the wind as it whispered past them.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" Blackfire finally asked. There seemed no point in small talk.

"What happened between you and Beast Boy," Raven replied.

Blackfire was about to say something, when they heard the sound of the roof door opening, from which they saw Starfire emerge.

"Robin asked me to ask you to come down."

"Why?" Raven and Blackfire asked in unison.

"Mr. Fixit's woken up."

Blackfire and Raven looked at each other. "Looks like we'll have to talk about this later," Blackfire said.

"Where am I?" Mr. Fixit asked, sitting up in bed. Next to him, Cyborg had just begun his own recharge sequence.

"You're in the Saint Titans' National Hospital, Mr. Fixit. Dr. Cyborg here, assisted by all his lovely nurses," Cyborg joked, indicating the rest of the Titans in the room.

"You're a new one," Mr. Fixit said, indicating Blackfire.

"Really? I hadn't noticed," Blackfire replied.

Mr. Fixit held his head in his hand. "How long was I out?"

"About half an hour. Your mechanical and cybernetic parts were easy to repair, but your biological systems needed more time to recover."

"And I'm still unarmed, I see," Mr. Fixit said, looking at his shoulder. Beast Boy, just entering the room with Starfire in tow, laughed.

"Hey, that's funny!" he said. Then he noticed "Blackfire."

"Beast Boy."

Nothing else was said as they stood at opposite ends of the room. Mr. Fixit looked at Cyborg, who shook his head in a 'don't talk about it' gesture.

"Well," he said, still glancing back at Blackfire and Beast Boy, "Apart from that, I seem to be in good condition. My compliments." Then he remembered: "My workshop. " He turned to face the Titans, eyebrows furrowed. "What happened to my workshop?"

"Apart from the doors and console, it's surprisingly mostly intact. Don't worry, Mr. Fixit, most of your inventions are still okay."

"And … and my robots?"

Hearing Starfire's shocked gasp as well as seeing the offended looks on some of the Titans' faces, Mr. Fixit hurriedly added, "No, no, that wasn't what I meant! I mean, was anyone hurt, or…"

"No," Robin answered, shaking his head. "At least, no casualties were reported."

"Thank goodness for small mercies," Mr. Fixit sighed, leaning back onto his pillow. "Please," he continued desperately, "You must believe me, I was not responsible for what happened!"

"We kinda figured that out when we found you in a coma in your lab," Cyborg told him.

"But we would like to know what happened," Robin said. "We could not find any recordings from your security cameras."

"That's because they were kept in the console's memory banks," Mr. Fixit replied. "You do realize that you do not have any reason to trust me now."

"That's for us to decide, Mr. Fixit."

"Of course, Robin," Mr. Fixit said, before he told the Titans about what had happened.

"So, long story short, some crazy Chinese guy with weird fashion sense came into your workshop and just started trashing things?" Beast Boy asked when Mr. Fixit had finished.

"I know how it sounds, Beast Boy, but that is the truth. I had never seen him before tonight, and if I had done something to wrong someone, then I have no awareness of it."

For the last few minutes, while Mr. Fixit was talking, Robin had been deep in thought, weighing Fixit's words, before saying "I don't think you had anything to do with the attack, apart from being the unwilling supplier of the robots."

"Yeah, man, where did you get so many of them anyway?" Beast Boy asked.

"Most of them I built simply because I was bored, from junkyard materials," Mr. Fixit sighed, "Some I needed for purposes of security. And as my passion for all things mechanical grew, so did my workshop need to grow, and that's when I built most of the more dangerous machines, to help in the construction."

"So you must have got hold yourself some pretty high tech stuff," Cyborg said. "If you can tell us where you got them, we can run traces, background checks, all kinds of stuff."

"Well, er, Cyborg, there's a problem with that…"

Blackfire laughed. "You stole them, didn't you?"

When everyone turned to look at her, she sighed and said, "It's what I would do."

"Yes, it is what you would do," Beast Boy said pointedly. Blackfire stuck her tongue out at him.

"She's right," Mr. Fixit said ruefully. "I did steal what materials I needed that I could not find in the junkyard, but I swear to you, it was nothing more dangerous than what you would find in a gun shop or military surplus store." He then added sadly, "As if that was any different."

"You know, there's one thing I just don't get." Robin said.

"What is it, Robin?" Starfire asked.

"Why anyone would do something like this."

"Er, hello, Earth to Robin? We almost died out there! And I'm not just saying that!"

"Yes, Beast Boy, I know. But why stop at killing us?"

Ignoring the 'I can't believe what I just heard' looks the other Titans gave him, Robin continued, "The city was on high alert, law enforcement concentrated in the junkyard area. So why didn't we hear about any massive bank robberies? High profile murders? Big crimes! If you were a criminal who knew, or thought you knew, that we would die tonight, wouldn't you take full advantage of the situation?"

His brow furrowed. "I just wish we knew who he was."

"His name's Legion," Shift said into her handphone, as she stood outside the warehouse they rented, sure that Legion, busy analyzing the tapes inside, was out of earshot.

"Legion, you sssay?" growled the deep voice on the other end of the line. "I have heard of him. You could not have picked a better candidate for…dissstraction purposssesss."

Shift smiled. "I know, inspired, wasn't it?"

"Inssspired indeed, my dear Ssshift, inssspired indeed. The quessstion now becomesss, will he sssussspect hisss unwitting role?"

"I don't think so. So far, that idiot seems to be doing this just for the money. He hasn't even asked who his mysterious paymaster is."

"Ah, the greed of humansss, how it blindsss them to the truth, drivesss them away from it."

Humans? "I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Nothing, Shift, jussst thinking aloud. Jussst make sure Raven isss obtained. I will sssuffer you no failure, and the reward ssshall be great ssshould you sssuccceed."

"Thank you. It feels so nice to be appreciated." But her benefactor had hung up.

She placed the phone back in her pocket. For a moment, she wondered about what she was getting herself into. Whoever that was, he definitely wasn't human, and that's where you got into trouble. All Earth still remembered the Imperium and Thanagar.

Then she shook her head. What did it matter anyway? Whatever happens, happens. She was a bounty hunter; she didn't ask questions. And so what if someone took over the world? They would always need someone like her to weed out people they didn't want.

Just like the Imperium did. Just like the Thanagarians did. And she was never caught.

She threw her hair back. It was as the saying went: "_Ave duci nuovo_ (_similis duci seneca_)!"-"Hail to the new boss (same as the old boss)!"

With that happy thought in her mind, she walked back to the warehouse.


	4. Treading Dark Waters

**Chapter Four: Treading Dark Waters**

As the Titans left the infirmary, Beast Boy pulled Raven to one side. "So, er, Raven…"

"Yes?"

"Soooo…er… "

"Beast Boy, what is it?"

"I'd … umm – umm – _what'sthedealbetweenyouandBlackfire_?" he said in one burst, before raising his hand above his head in a defensive posture.

Not that Raven was in any condition to react. "Me and Blackfire?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

"Yeah, you and Blackfire – I mean, um, you like talking to her and all that," he stammered.

"I like talking to all of you," Raven replied hesitantly, unsure about where the conversation was headed.

"Yes, but, er, you like talking to her…a lot," Beast Boy finished lamely, head down.

"Is that wrong?"

Beast Boy shook his head. "No, but, but…" His shoulders sagged. "Never mind. Forget I said anything," he said as he moved to walk away.

"Beast Boy."

"Yeah?"

Raven took hold of Beast Boy's arm. "Beast Boy, just because I spend time with Blackfire doesn't mean that you're any less my friend."

A small smile broke across Beast Boy's face. "Really?"

Raven nodded. "Maybe if you got to know her, it wouldn't seem so bad."

"Hint, hint, huh?" Beast Boy sighed. He placed his own hand on hers. "Look, Raven, I won't forget what happened the last time she was here, but I'll try to be friends with her, if it's important to you."

"It is," Raven told him, smiling. "Thank you, Beast Boy."

"Hey, what are friends for?"

As they walked away from the infirmary, a shape emerged from the shadows of one of the corridors behind them. Blackfire knew it was coming, but it still hurt.

It hurt a lot.

"Okay, so what do we got?" Cyborg asked Robin, when they all reached the main room.

"One, Mr. Fixit wasn't responsible for what happened, but I think we all knew that."

Everyone nodded, before Robin continued, "Two, there seems to be some new bad guy running around, someone with enough resources to take over Fixit's lab."

"So what? We've taken down bigger psychos than him, that's for sure," Beast Boy said. Blackfire glanced sideways at him, wondering if he was going to indict her somehow, but he seemed fully concentrated on the matter at hand.

_Of course he wouldn't do anything like that_, her treacherous mind told her. _Raven asked him not to._

"I don't think so. If we hadn't stopped them, those robots would have caused a whole lot more damage than just a few wrecked buildings," Robin continued. "And the absence of other crimes still bothers me. It's as if all he wanted to do was destroy things."

His face took on a more thoughtful look. "Unless… unless he was testing us, seeing how we would react," Robin realized.

"But how would he do that?" Raven asked.

"What do you mean?"

"We were in three different places, surrounded by homicidal robots. Unless he has an army of henchmen, I don't see how he could see what was happening."

"Who says he doesn't have an army of henchmen?"

Then the jealousy spoke. "I do. I for one would not be so stupid to work for anyone who would treat me like trash, or be stupid enough to assume other people would," Blackfire said.

Beast Boy looked like he was going to retaliate, but then the fire in his eyes dimmed and he said, "I guess I deserved that."

Blackfire was thrown off her stride. "What?"

"I deserved that, after what I said to you. Sorry, Blackfire. Friends?"

For a moment, Blackfire felt offended. How could Beast Boy think this clumsy apology could-

Then she saw Raven's eyes on her, and she knew that she was as much Raven's as Beast Boy. "Maybe," she replied, with a playfulness she did not feel. She had her pride, after all.

"Uh, what?" Cyborg asked, echoing the sentiments of the rest of the team, except to a lesser extent, Raven.

"Nothing, nothing," Blackfire responded. "Robin, please continue."

"Ooo-kay, back to 'henchmen', I agree with Blackfire that they may not even have been people. After all, Slade had his android ninjas."

"Slade?" Blackfire asked.

"Big criminal mastermind. I'll tell you all about him later," Cyborg said.

Robin rubbed his eyes and yawned. It had been a long night. "Yes, you should. I don't think we're in any condition to handle anything worse than that, actually," he said with a tired smile. "So, Titans, go! get some sleep," he joked.

Raven had barely lay her head on her bed when she heard a knocking at her door. "Raven?" she heard Blackfire ask from behind it. "Raven? Can I talk to you?"

Raven opened the door. "Yes?"

"Can I come in?"

_This is sudden_, Raven thought as she opened the door.

Blackfire walked slowly into the room, holding one arm within the other. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Raven replied, closing the door.

Silence was all they heard for a few seconds, before Blackfire said, "What happened between me and Beast Boy, it's, it's not something I want anyone to know about. I know I made everyone curious, but so what? I'm used to it."

Raven felt a small pang of anxiousness. This nihilistic talk felt all too familiar. When her friends were captured by the Puppet King, Blackfire often spoke like this when she referred to the life she led before she joined the Titans.

Or at least, was trying to.

Putting those thoughts from her mind, Raven was about to speak when Blackfire continued, "And I've never cared about what other people have thought of me, so if…if you don't want to be seen near me after this, I won't mind."

Raven did not need any of her powers to know that was a lie. "Blackfire-"

"We were arguing, the two of us. I won't bore you with the details, but it was basically about the amount of time the two of us were spending together. And then Beast Boy called me a lesbian."

This time it was Raven's turn to be silent, as her mind tried to process what she had just heard. "What?" she asked. It was all that could come out.

"Isn't that what you humans call a woman who likes women?" Blackfire asked. "I'm not stupid, Raven. I've heard about Earth, how the rest of the known galaxy thinks of it as one of the most corrupt, decadent planets in existence." Her eyes took on a more wistful look. "it's why I came here in the first place," she whispered.

Raven stood there in mute silence as Blackfire continued, "I heard that humans were allowed to do anything they liked, be whomever they wanted to be. I knew that something like that was impossible, but hey, I had nothing to lose."

She sat down on Raven's bed. "And then, when I came here, I found out most of the stories were true, and for a moment, I thought I could be happy." Her face darkened. "And then I found out that some things never change no matter where you go."

Although her mind was still a mess from trying to figure out what Blackfire was saying, Raven still managed to ask, "What do you mean?"

"I did not mind Beast Boy calling me a lesbian, just how he said it." Her voice grew quieter. "It reminded me of how my father would have said it."

She turned to Raven. "Raven, can I trust you, that you won't tell anyone what I'm about to tell you now?"

What Raven wanted to say at first was, _What kind of question is that,_ but then she saw the quiet look of desperation in Blackfire's violet eyes. "Yes," she said.

Blackfire took a deep breath, and began. "It was five years ago, on Tamaran. I was around fourteen then, although in human years I would have been almost sixteen…"

"_I'm sorry, Father, I'm sorry! Please don't hurt her…please…" Komand'r wept, as she knelt before her father on his throne, the two of them alone save Komand'r's chambermaid, also crying as she knelt with her arms restrained. Behind her, the only other person in the throne room, Galfore, Komand'r's guardian stood reluctant watch._

_Her father, King Meand'r, rose and stood in front of his kneeling daughter, his face dark with rage. "How could you think I will forgive you? How could you think I could forgive…her?" he spat out._

"_Father, please – do what you want to me, but don't hurt her. It wasn't her fault."_

"_No, it wasn't your fault, that much I am willing to believe," her father growled. "But it was her fault that this unnatural union continued as long as it did, wasn't it?"_

"_No, father-"_

"_DO YOU TAKE ME FOR A FOOL!" her father screamed._

"_No father," Komand'r said quietly._

_Meand'r walked around his daughter to the girl who knelt, the chambermaid Pyurit'i, her long brown hair encasing one of the most beautiful faces Komand'r ever knew. "Tell me, Pyurit'i, is it true what I think my daughter says? That she is the reason that this…relationship lasted so long?"_

_Komand'r looked into Pyurit'i's ocean-blue eyes, willing her to tell the truth. Please, tell may father everything, tell him about I was the one who gave the first kiss, about how I made numerous excuses just so I could see you during occasions of state when I was supposed to attend, about how I spent the money I supposedly lost to buy you mother those medicines your mother needed._

_About how I told you how much I loved you when you wanted to leave, because you were afraid of what happened to me if my father found out._

"_Well, chambermaid, is it true?"_

_When Pyurit'i looked up at her father, Komand'r felt a wild hope enter her. She was going to answer him truthfully, and no matter what happened next, they would face it together._

_And then she answered._

_And she broke Komand'r's heart into a thousand shards._

"_No, your Majesty, it's not true. I fell in love with your daughter, and I did whatever I could to force her into this relationship."_

_King Meand'r walked back to his throne, having heard what he wanted to hear and obviously not caring about the truth._

"_Galfore?"_

"_Majesty?"_

"_You will go to Commander Kasd'r and instruct him that he is to bring this filthy creature to one our most inhospitable prisons, preferably the one on our third moon, where she is to be held indefinitely. Is that understood?"_

_Komand'r was too shocked to speak as Galfore answered, "But your Majesty-"_

"_Is that understood?" King Meand'r asked, the barely suppressed anger all too obvious._

"…_Yes, yes, your Majesty."_

"_Good. Take her away."_

_As Galfore left the room with Pyurit'i in tow, Meand'r looked at his eldest child. "Do not worry, my dear daughter, I am still your father, and have no intention of punishing you."_

"_Lucky me." Komand'r said under her breath._

_Not hearing her, the King continued, "I will ensure that all records of this deviance are erased, and all witnesses silenced-one way or another. Due to actions not of your own choosing our throne has barely escaped a scandal it cannot endure, and when you take your position as Queen of Tamaran-"_

"_No."_

"_What?"_

"_I said no." Komand'r rose, glaring at her father. "I will not become Queen of Tamaran. In fact, I do not want to have anything to do with you, this planet, or anything associated with it! As far as I am concerned, you and all of this can freeze in all the hells that ever were!"_

"_Komand'r! Remember yourself!" Meand'r said, arising from his throne._

"_I remember myself! I remember myself as someone who had to endure seventeen years of endless ceremony, of having to always obey, of never being allowed to think for herself, of being held in a golden prison!"_

_She wiped another tear from her eye as she continued in front of her incensed father. "Of finally meeting the one person who had made it bearable, of being happy, really happy for the first time in her life." Her eyes narrowed. "Of having that person taken away from her, simply because it offended her father's delicate sensibilities. Yes father, I remember myself, I remember very well."_

_Her father sat in his throne, fuming for a while, before he finally spoke, "It is obvious to me that you are unsuitable for the throne. Your younger sister, Koriand'r, shall be made my heir in your stead," he said._

_Komand'r didn't rise to the bait. "Good. I hope she's a better puppet than I was."_

_That night, Komand'r died, and gave life to Blackfire._

"I tried to rescue her, after I ran away, but apparently, there was an attack on the prison ship carrying her. There were no survivors, and no-one was ever caught." Blackfire said calmly, as if she were doing no more than describing the weather.

Her mind still reeling from what Blackfire had been telling her, Raven found herself inflicted with a kind of paralysis. She found herself not knowing what to say or what to do. _Could any of the other Titans have handled this better?_ Raven asked herself, before Blackfire interrupted her thoughts.

"He killed her." Blackfire whispered, her breaking voice filled with sadness and rage in equal amounts. "Somehow, he killed her."

As Raven watched the ex-criminal, many things became clear to her - Blackfire's obsession with her sister's demise, her contempt of what the universe deemed 'proper', her emotional difficulties, all made sense.

"Blackfire?" she began nervously.

"Don't worry, Raven, I know you're not…not like me," Blackfire interrupted. "It's just that I feel more comfortable around-" Here Blackfire stopped, as if she wondered if she had said too much.

"Yes?"

"Nothing, nothing," Blackfire said dismissively, hurriedly moving toward the door.

"Blackfire, what were you going to say?" raven asked. She didn't know why she was pressing, at least consciously, but for some reason, she felt as if she had to know.

Standing in the threshold of the door, Blackfire stopped, and whispered something. "What?" Raven asked.

"Outcasts," Blackfire whispered, a little louder this time. Then she stepped out the door, leaving a confused and hurt Raven in her wake.


	5. Blood, Sweat And Tears

**Chapter Five: Blood, Sweat And Tears**

It was late in the afternoon when Raven woke up; she had been more tired than she had thought. Walking into the Titans' rec room, she was half-surprised to find that apart from her, Blackfire was the only one awake, staring out the window into nothing.

"When you have almost a quarter of the known galaxy after you, you learn how to control your sleep patterns," she offered by way of explanation. "About last night, Raven, I wasn't trying to, to...you know what I mean. It's just that I feel more at ease around other women, you understand?"

"I thought you said outcasts," Raven said.

Blackfire let out a small laugh. "Guess I should learn to keep my mouth shut, shouldn't I?"

Then growing solemn, she continued, "You know I'm right."

"My friends-"

"It's not because of your friends, but because of you. Isn't it?"

Raven wanted to respond, but she knew Blackfire was right. In the two years that she had been with the Titans, she did become closer to them, but despite that there was still a gulf between her and the others; even with Starfire and Cyborg, her two closest friends among the Titans.

Blackfire broke the silence. "Raven, I'm sorry for what I said, but-"

"No, you're not sorry." Raven said abruptly. "You were never sorry."

"Raven, wait-"

Raven held up a hand, her tightly shut eyes conveying how hurt she was, before she walked slowly out the door.

Blackfire just stood there, a far cry from her aggressively cheerful self. She never meant for this to happen. She never meant to hurt Raven, the only person to show her anything even resembling kindness since she left Tamaran.

But she did.

And it was her fault.

Outside, Raven was worried. Why had she acted like that? Why was she so hurt? She should have been able to control her emotions better, but instead, she threw what was the closest thing to a temper tantrum she had to offer.

Maybe it was because she was right that it hurt more than it should have. But then again, she should have been able to control her emotions nevertheless.

And then another thought occurred to Raven, one a great deal more disturbing.

She hurried to her room, to find a small mirror.

A mirror to her mind.

(scene change)

"Hey! Be careful with that, willya!"

"Look, y'wanna do this?"

"Y'wanna die, numbnuts?"

Foreman Joseph Williamson rubbed his gradually aching forehead. It was the night before his week off, for Chrissake! You're not supposed to have this kind of crap on the night before your week off! The fact that he and the crane operator were the only ones working there did not make anything better.

He had been looking forward to his holiday. Seven days of not seeing the damn dock, of seeing Vegas, of his wife maybe getting lucky at the roulette tables (and maybe with him getting luckier in his hotel room while Sally did that), that sorta thing.

And then this had to come up. A shipment of heavy weapons munitions, bombs, missile launchers, LAWs, et cetra, just because some ding-dong in D.C. thought that the troops down here didn't have enough toys to play with. Joe didn't mind giving the troops an extra gun or two, he was in WWII and 'Nam, and times was that a little more firepower would've helped, but…jeez! You could blow up Ho Chi Minh twice with what was coming in!

And to make matters worse, this joker on the crane almost dropped a whole crate of the stuff. Joe was almost fifty, and he didn't need another goddam heart attack. PETA musta had something to do with this guy working there, 'cos there was no chance in hell Joe woulda allowed this jackass to work there.

He raised his walkie-talkie to his mouth. At least with that last crate, he could hand it over to the soldiers waiting at the dock gates.

"Sergeant Berman? This is Foreman Williamson, we've got the last of your crates down here. You can come and pick them up now."

No answer. He tried again. "Sergeant Berman? Your crates're all offloaded. Pick'em up so we can all go home."

Still no answer. "Sergeant Berman?"

"Maybe the walkie's out," the crane operator supplied.

"Maybe your brain's out," Joe snapped.

"Or maybe they're all dead," an English woman's voice sounded from the roof of a warehouse. "Legion, will all of you load up the weapons?"

"With pleasure, Shift."

From the darkness, a group of twenty masked men, also in grey trenchcoats ran out of the darkness towards the crates, while Shift jumped down in front of the terrified foreman.

"I'll thank you to be silent, Mr.…," she glanced at his tag, "Williamson."

"Halt! Stop what you're doing, or we'll shoot!"

Shift glanced over her shoulder. On the transport ship, a group of sailors had their weapons drawn.

"Oh look, it's the Navy. Legion, be a darling and handle them, won't you?"

"It _was_ getting a little boring."

As the sailors prepared to fire their weapons, eight masked men picked up two crates of weapons while the other twelve ran up to the ship, each pulling out a pair of obsidian machetes, which they stabbed into the ship's hull, and proceeded to scale up the ship as if it were a mountain. Legion himself took refuge behind a warehouse.

The sailors fired at their assailants, but as each grey man was struck, a trail resembling black smoke trailed from their wounds instead of blood, and as they received fatal injuries, they simply dissolved into a cloud of that same smoke.

After the first twelve were dispatched, the sailors prepared to take careful aim at the bandits carting off the weapons, but their attention was soon drawn to another group of twelve men emerging from the darkness behind the warehouse, all as equally alike as the first group.

Except this time, Legion had not been wearing a mask when he duplicated himself.

However, this time Legion did not have the element of surprise on his side, as he did with the soldiers at the gates, and his clones were mown down like chaff. Not that it mattered to him; they were just there as distractions.

Eventually, the sailors realized this, and a few of them started taking shots at the Legions transporting the crates, while the rest gave their friends firing support.

"Oh for- You, be a good boy and stay here, alright?" Shift asked the terrified foreman, who managed a nod. "Good. Legion! All of you take the weapons! I'll deal with the sailors!"

With that, she dropped Joe on the ground, and turned into a bolt of lightning, burning through one of the sailors. When the bolt hit the ship's deck, it turned back into Shift.

"Surprised, lads?" Without awaiting an answer, she turned again into something that resembled nothing more than a red outline of her. When the sailors fired, the bullets passed right through the invisible cloud. She set her sights on the closest sailor, a young man made no less good looking by the look of sheer terror on his face.

_Pity I have to kill him_, Shift thought, as she slapped the man, who immediately keeled over dead from the massive radiation poisoning that boiled his brain and left a hand shaped mark on both his cheeks as Shift's hand passed straight through him.

His compatriots were either frozen in terror or running away to the ship's hold. _Do they think they could run away from me?_ Shift asked herself. _How cute_. Changing her form, this time one of ice, she drew one arm back and threw it forward, where it formed a pillar of jagged ice that flew toward her prey, running through each victim, and Shift did this repeatedly, pursuing the sailors and bringing her arm back and throwing it forward again like a whip. Only one sailor survived this onslaught, an older black man who had managed to reach the one of the waterproof doors and shut it.

Had he done it quicker, or at least quieter, Shift would not have found him. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Somewhat more merciful thoughts were running through Legion's head as he watched the quivering foreman. The crane operator had been dispatched easily enough, a nice bloody mess, just like the soldiers, but there was something about leaving witnesses that stoked his ego.

Besides, tempus fugit, and all that.

(scene change)

As Legion and Shift drove away in their trucks, he asked her over his two-way radio, "Right then, we got the weapons. Now what?"

"Now, my good Legion, we find the Titans."

Legion nodded. Then raising the radio again, "Shift?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"What do we need with so much bloody ordinance? I mean, the Titans are children! They're barely out of short pants! Isn't this a little overkill?"

"For the last time, Legion, stop worrying!"

"It's not me I'm worried about! It's Raven! Last I remember, we're supposed to bring her back alive! Can't do that with all this now, can we?"

"Relax, Legion. We're only going to take a crate or so of weapons for our own personal use. The rest, we'll sell to the boss. We will leave these trucks in a nearby depot, where our employer's made arrangements for their transport as well as arrangements for a little extra pocket money."

"And therein lies the other rub. Who is this, our mysterious employer?"

"Does it matter? So long as we get paid, I don't mind."

"But the job's getting more complicated. This little arms affair wasn't what I signed up for!"

"Oh please, two things: One, we are getting paid for this, and two, I know that you enjoyed it, didn't you?"

She could almost hear his smile as he replied, "That is quite beside the point, Shift, and you know it."

(scene change)

It was around half past ten when the call finally came in.

"Titans, we have a situation at the docks." Robin said, coming into the main room. Starfire, Beast Boy and Cyborg were watching some late night horror-romance movie, while Blackfire sat at the table reading what appeared to be one of Raven's books.

Starfire, Beast Boy and Cyborg looked up from the TV to Robin. "What happened?" Beast Boy asked.

"Seems like there was some kind of terrorist attack. They stole a big shipment of weapons, but managed to escape."

"Rob, I know how this sounds, but doesn't that make this a police, maybe even FBI investigation? I mean, we're usually called in to stop the bad guys, not track them down." Cyborg said.

"I know, but apparently the thieves were able to take down a small Army detachment and a shipful of Navy sailors."

"Are they all right?" Starfire asked.

"I'm…I'm afraid not, Star. There is only one survivor," Robin said solemnly, while Starfire reacted with a shocked gasp. "The FBI is calling for all the help we can give-speaking of which, where's Raven? I haven't seen her all day."

"In her room. I'll go get her," Blackfire said abruptly, before she walked off in silence in the direction of Raven's room.

"Ookay, that was weird," Cyborg said.

"You know what's weirder? She's been like that all day." Beast Boy added.

(scene change)

Blackfire walked up to Raven's door apprehensively. After the events of that morning, she did not know how Raven would react to her coming there. But all the same, this was something she had to do herself, and the longer she delayed, the worse she knew it would become.

That just left the question of what to say. Maybe a little teasing: "Hello, Raven? How are you? Listen, Robin's got something really exciting for us to do!"

No.

Definitely not.

Maybe "Raven, I'm so sorry for what I had done to you. Whatever it was. I think."

What was happening to her? She was usually so good with comebacks and witty repartee.

Maybe it was the fact that unlike before, this time the other person mattered to her, a feeling she had not experienced for five years. A feeling she did not know whether to cherish or dread.

Fortunately for Blackfire though, she did not have to do any talking. When the door opened and Raven stepped out, she held up a hand for silence before Blackfire had a chance to speak.

"I got the signal. Let's go. We don't have much time," Raven said.

Blackfire's face fell as Raven proceeded briskly to where the other Titans had gathered. Obviously, Raven still had not forgiven her for what had happened that morning.

Perhaps Raven sensed some of this as she stopped, and without turning around, said, "It's not your fault, Blackfire. It's just…just that I had a lot to think about. I'm sorry if I was harsh earlier."

"So…friends, Raven?" Blackfire asked in an unusually subdued voice.

"…Yes," Raven replied as she turned and briefly gave Blackfire what looked like a small troubled smile before she proceeded down the corridor again, Blackfire following.

(scene change)

The wail of police sirens provided an unwanted soundtrack to the scene playing out on the dockyard, where regular police officers and MPs carried out their work under the watchful eye of the FBI. Near the ship, Starfire was busy trying to console the traumatized foreman, although considering what she had seen on the way in, she felt like breaking down herself.

"It was terrible! Terrible!" the foreman cried. "When she- and he- Oh God!" he said, breaking down once more.

"It will be all right, we will make sure of that," Starfire said with a conviction she did not really feel as she tried to comfort the wailing man. At another end of the docks, Raven and Blackfire were talking to one of the MPs who had been called to the scene.

"It was real bad when we arrived," he said, his face still pale from both what he saw and the throwing up he did afterwards, "Half those guys, we'll only be able to ident if we can find their fingers, the others once we match dental records, or DNA." He clutched his stomach. "Excuse me," he finished, before heading to a nearby trashcan.

Raven looked at the body bags being loaded into the forensics van, some of them bending and sagging in places that a human body shouldn't. At least, one that was whole. The smell of burnt flesh mingled that with the pools of blood still congealing on the road outside.

Blackfire looked as if she was going to vomit herself. "You look okay, Raven, what's your secret?" she said, as cheerfully as a shampoo advertisement, or at least as cheerfully as she could manage.

"I'm used to it."

"What?" Blackfire asked incredulously. "What have you guys been up to?"

But the answer was one she had not expected.

"I have nightmares about my father. Sometimes, they feel like memories." Raven said quietly, before turning to Blackfire. "You get used to the smell of blood and burning flesh."

Blackfire raised an eyebrow. Blood? Burning flesh?

It was then Robin came back, along with Beast Boy, whose eyes and nose were watering. "What happened?" Raven asked.

"Beast Boy ran into some sort of scent bomb," Robin offered by way of explanation.

"I vollowd a zend drail indo a barehouse, bud az zoon az I godh id, I godh hidh by der words sbell ebber, dood! Id waz lige habbing bire and jalapedio pebber stubbed ub by dose!" Beast Boy added, before blowing his nose.

"We did however, find these," Robin finished, holding out two videotapes, each tied with a shiny red ribbon. "They look like the security tapes that were missing from the cameras."

"That's stupid." Blackfire said. Seeing the looks on the others' faces, she clarified, "The first thing a good thief does, or rather, doesn't do, after they steal something is leave anything that could lead people to them. I should know," she added smugly.

"Which means that whoever left this wanted us to find it," Robin mused.

"It's still stupid." Blackfire said.

It was then the Titans noticed the approach of Starfire and Cyborg. "Anything?" Robin asked.

"Some real strange stuff, Rob. My sensors indicate, and the forensics team will back me up on this, that some of those guys were stabbed to death with something like a jagged spike, while two of them died from extreme radiation poisoning. The weird thing is, that with the amount of radiation damage they suffered, my Geiger counter should have been ringing like a church bell, but, well, I got nothing. It should have been Chernobyl up there if they used that much radiation," Cyborg summed up.

"Robin," Starfire said in a small voice.

"Yes, Star?"

"Whoever did this…" she trailed off.

Robin placed his hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, Star, we'll find them, and we'll stop them."


	6. The Serpents Rear

**Chapter Six: The Serpents Rear**

In the forest outside the city, Legion and his clones was busy moving their ill-gotten military hardware into one of the many abandoned caves in the hills, while Shift received a call from their taskmaster.

"The weaponsss have been recccieved, and you ssshall recccieve your paymentsss asss sssoon asss I have sssecured them," the familiar hissing growl said over the phone.

"Thank you, sir."

"No my dear, thank you, sssssss…Isss everything elssse moving at ssspeed?"

"As far as we're concerned, yes. Sir, I do have a question though."

"Yesss?"

"Why did you ask us to do this? I thought we were here just for Raven."

"Let me jussst sssay I have friendsss in the Middle Eassst on both sssidesss who are jussst itching to get their bloodssstained little handsss on some fine American weaponry. Alssso, consssider Legion, a creature able to duplicate himssself. Thusss the possibility for an endless sssupply of sssuicide bombersss presssentsss itssself, doesssn't it?"

Shift looked back at the toiling Legion, who had just finished moving their crate into the cave and was now placing a large bottle of Old Peculiar to his lips.

"I never quite thought of it that way," Shift said.

"What isss good for you isss good for me, essspecially in mattersss regarding our little Corbin."

"Pardon?"

"Corbin- it isss Latin for 'raven' " he said, before hanging up as abruptly as before.

"Prick." Shift said as she turned off her phone.

"Now, now, Shift, that is not at all ladylike," Legion, or rather, one of his clones said, coming up from behind her.

"To hell with being ladylike. I'd rather settle for being rich."

"I agree, although being alive long enough to spend said riches would also be nice."

"What do you mean by that?"

"We are sitting on a crate of high explosives, rocket launchers, and what seemed to me to be a flamethrower, that's what I mean."

Shift placed her hand to her forehead. "Why are you being such a bloody girl's blouse over this, Legion? If you think that the fire's too hot, get out of the kitchen!"

Legion visibly backed off. "All right, all right, no need for all that! I'm just wondering if we were not being cautious enough."

"To hell with caution! Caution does not get us paid!" Shift yelled, growing increasingly irritated over Legion's constant demand for prudence.

"Right, right, whatever you say," Legion said, holding up both hands in a conciliatory manner. "I'm just not used to dealing with metahumans, is all."

"I don't know what you are so worried about. You said it yourself, they are just children."

She took on a more thoughtful look. She had originally wanted to do this later, much later, but Legion's spinelessness annoyed her. It was time to take Legion out of his comfort zone.

"Come with me, Legion," she said, indicating their weapons stockpile, "we've got work to do."

(scene change)

In the Titans Tower, four Titans were still awake. Robin was busy converting the information in the videotapes into a digital form to be sent to the CIA, while…

"Thanks, Raye," Beast Boy said, as he felt warmth flow from Raven's hands into his face. The headaches remained, but "At least I can talk properly now."

"I wonder if that's a good thing." Raven deadpanned.

Beast Boy scowled, but inwardly he was delighted. He did not really manage to fully appreciate how much he had missed Raven, but even so, there was an emptiness, a longing that he had felt for the past few days that was only now being remedied.

As if he was going to show it, he thought playfully. "Ha, ha, Raven, very funny, I hear Saturday Night Live's hiring" he replied, but try as he might, he just didn't have Raven's ability to deadpan everything, and he broke into a smile.

And he thought it felt pretty good to see Raven smile back, albeit a little uncertainly.

What Beast Boy did not know was the reason behind it.

And had Blackfire, watching from the shadows had known as well, she would have walked back to her quarters with a far lighter heart, rather than one that made her bury her hands in her face as she sat leaning against the door, cursing the hopelessness of the inevitable.

(scene change)

It was the middle of breakfast when the call came in, the display screen flashing the word 'MESSAGE' over and over again.

Robin put down his sandwich, walked to the console and pressed the 'RECEIVE' button.

An image of distinguished older man appeared on the viewscreen. "Hello, Robin."

"Director Bristow," Robin nodded. "You get anything from those tapes we sent you?"

"A lot, actually," Director Bristow said. He pressed a few keys on a computer console in front of him, and a still from one of the tapes appeared on the screen, one indicating a beautiful woman. "This is Lucille Farrington, bounty hunter under the name Shift, for obvious reasons. There is an outstanding warrant out for her arrest involving her suspected connection in the Stag Industries incident a few years back, as well as several assassinations and kidnappings during the Thanagarian and Imperium regimes."

He pressed a few more keys, and the picture was replaced by another one, this one displaying a Chinese man in a trenchcoat.

"This may be the Chinese man you were talking about, also a bounty hunter," Bristow continued, "Called Legion, also for obvious reasons. Real name unknown, known aliases Richard Fa, John See and Aaron Liew. Some of our sources place him in connection with various terrorist groups and foreign dictatorships, in addition to outstanding warrants in connection with arms and drug smuggling as well as human trafficking."

He continued, "We suspect that the incident last night was a raid they were employed to carry out. The 'why', however, is what bothers me. Most of the weapons they obtained can be done with far less risk and expense on the black market. Either their employer is phenomenally stupid, operating on some sort of timetable, or has had a change of plans. However you look at it though, Shift and Legion were apparently given enough incentive to carry out this assault."

After Director Bristow pressed another key, the picture disappeared, and he leaned forward. "These two individuals are not to be taken lightly, Robin. Rest assured the CIA's doing whatever it can to stop them, in addition to whatever efforts you're making."

"Thanks, Director."

Director Bristow nodded and the screen went black. "So now we got ourselves a couple of names to go with the faces. What next?" Cyborg asked.

"Now," Robin sighed, "Now we give this information to the authorities while we carry out our own search. Raven, can you do whatever you did to find us to find these people?"

"I don't know. I can try, but I will not be able to come with you."

"Do what you can. Beast Boy, I'll need you here at the Tower too."

"Why?" Beast Boy asked. Not that he was that offended by the suggestion, as he risked a sideways glance at Raven.

"I don't plan on doing any fighting today, just finding out where they are. Anyway, Blackfire can't guard the Tower alone."

"What?" Blackfire and Beast Boy asked in unison.

"Look, Blackfire-"

"Let me guess," Blackfire said sarcastically. "You don't trust me; you want me where you can see me."

"Blackfire, that's not what I meant," Robin replied. "I was going to say that there's a good chance that those two bounty hunters have no idea you're with us. If we do run into any trouble, we may need to give them a bit more firepower than they expect."

Robin then gave a significant look at both Blackfire and Beast Boy. "Besides, you two have been getting on each other's nerves for too long, and I think it's time you learned to get along."

_Although Beast Boy sticking his tongue out at Blackfire may not have helped,_ Robin thought as he left the Tower.

(scene change)

Raven concentrated on the crystal globe in front of her. She wasn't able to use her 'dowsing' technique to find the bounty hunters, but perhaps some of their previous victims, perhaps the ones Shift assassinated, would be willing to help.

The problem was not that the technique required silence, but also a calmness of mind that so far, had eluded Raven. She tried again and again to achieve total peace of mind, but she had so much to think about.

She cut off the soul link and sighed. It seemed that her life, of all peoples', had become far more complicated lately, and did not promise to become any simpler. AT least they weren't arguing.

At least, arguing audibly.

And when she considered what she had seen in her mirror…Raven sighed. She tried again, recalling the night she and Blackfire tried to find her friends…

_Azerath Metrion Xinthos…_

_Azerath Metrion Xinthos…_

_Azerath Metrion Xinthos_…

She found herself in a wasteland, it's grey sky visible even through the white fog that was everywhere. Ghostly figures, thousands of them, floated around her, accompanied by the faint sound of howling wind. Raven also saw the outline of impossible shapes, twisted forms from fevered imaginations, square circles, lines that were both curved and straight at the same time, smims and fouders that the specters flowed through

One ghostly figure, darker in shade than the other, floated in front of her.

_What who do you seek_

Raven formed a picture in the air, formed from the image Director Bristow had showed her.

_I seek her victims so I might find her_

The ghostly figure did not speak, instead pointing off into the distance. Then, it and the other ghostly shapes disappeared

Raven walked in that direction. She moved as if she were in water, but with every stride she took, her surroundings flashed past her as if she took a thousand strides at once, and in no time at all, she saw the back of a figure sitting on the ground, the only form there. As she approached, this time at a more normal pace, the apparition turned, revealing itself to be female, and Raven saw within her arms the sleeping form of a baby that would never wake up.

_She took me she took my son she took my family and I'll never get them back help me help me please_ the spirit rambled.

_I will but first I need to find her_

The spirit opened her mouth to speak, but before it could 'say' anything, a large clawed hand emerged from the fog, and jerked her and her baby into the nothingness.

"Tut, tut, my dear Corbin," a voice hissed, and this voice wasn't like the voices of normal spirits, heard in the fibre of one's soul, but was actually audible.

Raven wished it wasn't.

"Yesss, my lovely sssongbird," the voice suddenly said from behind her, "I am not your average pitiful ssspirit, sssometimesss sssad, sssometimess missschievousss, alwaysss weak. I am indeed, asss humansss sssay, sssomething elssse."

_Who…who are you_ Raven's soul croaked.

"Me? No one really, jussst a sssimple being with a complicated life. But dessscriptionsss can be ssso misssleading, can they not?"

The voice laughed, an incessant hiss that grated down to the bone. "Why don't you have a look at me, and form your own decccisssionsss?"

What emerged from the fog was nothing less than the stuff of Raven's nightmarish memories. A beast towered over her, at least seven feet tall; from the waist down, a pair of shaggy goat's legs, a long scaly snake's tail emerging from behind them, the torso, that of a man body covered in iridescent red and black scales, with two arms ending in hands with slim, taloned fingers.

But it was the head that caught all of Raven's attention, even though she would have given anything for it not to. A snake's head, the eyes red with yellow pupils, stared back at her. Behind the eyes, two long goat's horns formed an unholy U.

"Yesss, Corbin, I sssee that you are properly impressed," it hissed in good humor. Then its eyes narrowed, taking on a much more sinister look. "It really won't do for sssomeone of your ssstature to ssstoop to sssomething ssso low asss to conduct a sssearch for sssomeone. You ssshould really learn to leave that to underlingsss sssuch asss I."

Raven couldn't move, couldn't do anything, try as she might, as the beast moved to gaze into her eyes. As soon as it did so, she felt a tearing pain in her mind; not her head, but a pain that felt as if it were both far away from and yet right inside her. It was the pain of the regret of innocence lost, of losing all that one could without dying in a single instant, of knowing that one was truly alone in the world.

It was no physical pain, but the agony of the soul.

When it ended after, not an eternity, but rather an endless wait for the end, the demon drew back.

"You ssshould have done thisss a long time ago, my beloved sssongbird, it would have sssaved me a great deal of inconvenienccce. Ssso much have I learned, and I mussst thank you. Sss, I would have thought Robin much more prudent than that, leaving you alone with, ah, ssshall we ssay, two very ssspecial people? Pity they don't know jussst how…differently ssspecial you consssider them."

It grinned, revealing row upon row of fangs. "Pity they ssshall never know."

Fear clawed across Raven's heart. _Please don't hurt me_

"Hurt you? Why ssshould I hurt you? Don't worry, Raven, I won't hurt you. At least, not yet." Its smile grew even wider. "Your father would be very dissspleassed with me otherwissse."

And this time Raven did scream as the mouth opened impossibly large, until it formed a great abyss in front of Raven, drawing itself ever closer to her, until she found herself falling through its depths.

And on the edge of consciousness…voices.

"She's been in there all day!"

"Raven? Raven!"

"Raven!"

"Stand back!"

The sound of an explosion.

"Oh no, no, no, no…"

"Raven! Raven wake up! Raven!"

Raven opened her eyes to see Beast Boy and Blackfire kneeling near her, both their faces filled with concern. Had she been in any condition to notice, she would have noticed her door blasted in by a desperate Blackfire after she and Beast Boy heard the scream and the sound of her crystal ball shattering.

But she wasn't in any condition to notice, and in her distress, seized the nearest person to her in a desperate embrace.

"It's okay, Raven, everything's gonna be all right," Beast Boy said as he hugged her back just as strongly.

Blackfire took in the scene before her with a growing sense of jealous wretchedness as she watched Raven and Beast Boy share what was obviously a tender moment, a sense that she bitterly suppressed.

Then "Raven-"

"Blackfire!" Beast Boy said, offended. "Can't you see that she's crying here!"

"Yes she is, isn't she?" Blackfire retorted calmly.

Beast Boy was about to launch a verbal salvo of his own, when he realized, yes, she was crying. Raven was crying.

Raven. Crying.

The picture just didn't make sense.

Something had obviously gone very, very wrong.

Blackfire spoke again, and this time, Beast Boy did not stop her. "Raven, what happened?"

(scene change)

-Half an hour earlier-

"Wake up, Legion."

"Hnh?"

"Wake up."

"Why?" Legion asked blearily from his sleeping bag.

"I just got a call from our employer. He says that there's only three Titans at the Tower, and one of them's Raven."

"Bloody hell, that's a neat Copperfield, how'd he manage that?"

"I don't know, nor do I care. What matters is that our window of opportunity has just arrived. Get the stuff, and we'll set off."

"Righto, Shift," he replied. He blurred in place for a moment, and where there was one Legion there were now three. He blurred himself again, and another two Legions were created. The four of them set off for the cave while Legion Prime remained.

"Can I ask you a question?" Shift asked as she watched the four Legions carry out a crate and load it onto a SUV they had stolen the night before from a family camping in the woods. With any luck, the bodies would not be found for days yet.

"Go ahead."

"All this time I've known you, and I think this is the first time I've seen you use weapons other than those two machetes."

"Well, first off, I'm unable to duplicate the chemical reactions you find when you use things like guns, bombs, that style of thing. Second," he continued, his voice growing quietly reflective, "there's something personal, you know, when you kill someone with a knife. When you shoot a gun, you don't kill the person, the bullet does. It is quite clear that the bullet, traveling through the distance between you and your victim, is what kills. A small, cold sliver of metal. But when you use a knife, there is… a connection; the knife becomes part of you, uniting you with your prey. A sacred oneness, that's the best way I could describe it."

His eyes grew distant as he lapsed into silence. Then he repeated quietly, "A sacred oneness."

A long silence followed as Shift watched him hold his long knives, gazing wistfully at them. "Come on, Legion," she said, breaking the quiet, "Let's move out."

(scene change)

-Present time-

"Perhaps we should return to the Tower and see if Raven has made any progress?" Starfire asked Robin.

"She's got a point, Rob," Cyborg agreed. Indicating the evening sky, he added, "We've been doing this all day. I need a break, man."

"Look, just one more lead, and if it turns up nothing, we go home, okay?"

His two friends nodding in agreement, Robin walked into the dark alley, and the rat-faced man he expected emerged from the shadows.

"This better be good, Robin," the man said, lighting a cigarette. "It ain't gonna be a Hawaii vacation for me if people see me talking to you, get what I mean?"

"Like what could have happened to you if we hadn't stopped Slade?" Robin retorted.

"…What do you want?"

"I want to know if you've seen any one of them," Robin said, holding out two photographs of Legion and Shift.

The man looked at the photographs, and nodded. "The guy, I haven't seen him, but the girl I know. Kinda hard to forget her, get what I mean?" He pointed with the cigarette to the darkness of the nearby forest. "I was gathering some evidence to sting some main drug link, when she drives up to the pushers I was talking to and asks us if we know anywhere she and her stuff can have a little privacy. Paid double shift rates too, get what I mean?."

"Did you tell her anything?"

"Sure, it's not just the money, but a girl like that, guy'd Sieg Heil in Israel to get in her good books, among getting in other things, get what I mean?" He then proceeded to give Robin directions to where Shift and Legion had hidden their weapons.

"Guys, big break, I know where Shift and Legion are," Robin said.

"Gotcha. You want me to call the Tower?"

"No time, just call whatever law enforcement you can. Titans, go!"

As the man watched the Titans move away, he retreated into the shadows. "Good work," Legion said as the man reached him.

"Thanks man, just pay this piper, get what I mean?"

"Of course." Legion then took out a folder and applied a lighter to it, dropping it into an iron drum as it took flame.

"Thanks, man," the rat-faced man said as he leaned over the drum to watch the folder burn. "That stuff woulda really cost me some personal PR points, get what I mean?"

"Having your FBI superiors find out you're the drug link they've been looking for would definitely put a crimp in your social life, yes," Legion agreed. "But then again, so would this."

The rat faced man was about to ask Legion what he meant, when he suddenly felt a thump in his back, followed by a growing wetness. When he tried to speak, he found that the words would not, could not come out.

There was no pain. Just the sound of Legion wiping off a bloody machete on the man's jeans, followed by a growing darkness.

"Get what I mean?" Legion said to the cooling corpse.


	7. The Serpent Strikes

**Chapter Seven: The Serpent Strikes**

"I can't reach Robin," Beast Boy said from the console in the main room.

"You sure?" Blackfire asked from beside her.

"Look, I don't know much about all this stuff, okay! All I know is that I can't reach Robin or Cyborg or Starfire! I can't reach them!"

They turned back to Raven, sitting on the long seat. She looked a great deal calmer then the pitiful, terrified creature they had found in her room, but she still looked a bit haunted.

"Raven, are you sure that whatever it was you had seen was going to attack us?" Blackfire asked urgently.

"Yeah, like now?" Beast Boy added in the same urgent tone of voice.

"Yes, I'm sure." Raven whispered.

"Then it may have jammed our communications," Blackfire concluded.

"Yeah, but why us? Now? Here?" Beast Boy said frantically.

"It wants me." Raven said softly. At the confused looks on her friends' faces, she continued, seeming to grow smaller, "It said… it said it was sent by my father."

"Your father?" Blackfire asked.

"Her dad's some big time demon, definitely not a nice guy," Beast Boy summarized.

And I thought my father was bad, Blackfire thought.

It was at that moment a siren blared. "What's that?" Blackfire asked.

"The perimeter alarm," Raven said. Beast Boy pressed a few more keys on the console, and an image of the area outside the Titan Tower entrance appeared, showing-

"Hey, isn't that that Legion guy? Or, er, guys?" Beast Boy asked. On the screen, a group of Legion clones were running toward the Tower, except that this time they seemed to be wearing something over their grey trenchcoats.

"What are they wearing?" Blackfire asked, peering at the image.

"Looks like some kinda big jackets," Beast Boy said.

"Is there any way to enlarge-"

And then all sound was drowned out by the explosions.

(scene change)

"Success!" Legion said, outside the tower, as he watched another group of Legions, rush toward the Tower.

"Don't celebrate yet, Legion," Shift warned him. "We've still got a bird to catch, and we're out of explosives."

"Now who's the worrywart, eh?" Legion asked, smiling. He had never felt an adrenaline rush like this (and he'd had quite a few), and now Shift's coolness gave him a tone of annoyed jollity.

"Not me, that's for certain," Shift smiled. "Shall we charge now?" she asked in a refined tone.

"Oh, let's," Legion replied in the same smarmy manner.

(scene change)

"What was THAT?" Blackfire asked, steadying herself.

"Sounded like a bomb," Beast Boy said.

"That was obvious," Blackfire and Raven retorted at the same time, a second before a beeping from the computer caught their attention.

On the viewscreen, now displaying the image from the entrance hall camera, the three Titans saw a solitary Legion enter with something on his back, attached to a tubelike device. Suddenly, a massive gout of flame spat out from the tube, engulfing all that it touched.

"I never liked that color scheme," Blackfire said straight-faced.

"Dude! They're torching our base! We gotta stop them!" Beast Boy yelled, heading toward the stairs.

Blackfire turned to follow him, then turned back to where Raven was sitting on the couch. "Raven?"

Raven sat with her eyes closed a second longer. Then they opened, and she said, "Let's go."

Her eyes and voice were blazing with a newfound determination.

And somewhere, a note of fear.

(scene change)

The flamethrower issued yet another stream of fire into the smoking ruins of the Tower's entrance hall as Legion Prime and Shift entered, escorted by another group of clones. "Legion dear, must you have all the fun?"

"Oh deary deary me, where have my manners gone?" Legion said theatrically, raising his hand to his forehead. "Of course you may have a turn, Shift."

Shift's body erupted into flame itself, and she immediately turned her attention to the steel double doors at the end of the chamber, her body blazing brighter as her temperature increased. Slowly, a molten circle within the doors began to take shape.

"Sure you don't want any hel-"

This time, it was the villains' turn to be floored by an explosion as the two double doors blew outward, flinging the burning Shift into the flamethrower wielding Legion with predictable results.

"Yeah! How d'ya like them apples!" Beast Boy exulted into the gathering dust cloud.

"I do my best," Blackfire modestly said. "What do you think, Raven?"

"They're still here." Raven said, pointing into the dustcloud.

Her two friends looked into the cloud to where Raven pointed. Out of the smoking ruins of the flamethrower, stepped Shift. "Come now, fighting fire with fire? All you get," here her voice took on a much more sinister turn, "is a bigger fire."

Legion too had obviously survived the explosion, as he emerged less than two seconds later. "You know Shift," he said, taking his two machetes out from his trenchcoat, "we were told to capture only Raven alive, weren't we?"

"Yes, why?" Shift asked, her now diamond body gleaming.

"Good."

"Guys, this does not look good," Beast Boy moaned.

(scene change)

It was one of the biggest manhunts in the city's history, with the CIA and FBI branches lending some of their own manpower to the police force currently approaching the cave that the other three Titans were directed to. At the Police Commissioner's request, trained antiterrorist units had took point and were moving toward the cave.

"You sure we shouldn't try calling the Tower, Robin? I mean, these guys _are_ sitting on a stockpile of really heavy weaponry-and when it comes to heavy weaponry, I know what I'm talking about," Cyborg said, the dark shroud of the forest doing nothing to calm him.

"I'm sure, Cy. The faster we find these guys, the less time they have to actually use those weapons."

"But Robin, won't you- I mean, won't we might be placing ourselves in unnecessary danger?" Starfire disagreed.

"That's a risk we have to take," Robin said, not appearing to hear Starfire's original words. Then he turned to her and smiled. "Don't worry, I'll be careful."

Starfire smiled back when one of the operatives stood up and gave the all clear.

"All clear? What?" Cyborg asked, bewildered. But upon further investigation, it appeared the operative had called right. The cave had recently been abandoned, and all three Titans formed the same terrible conclusion too late, as their gazes locked upon the distant Titan Tower on the other side of the city.

A moment later, the sound of an explosion echoed above the city's normal din.

(scene change)

Beast Boy charged at the incoming Legions in the corridor with all the force that his bull form could muster, knocking them into the wall of the T-junction in front off him. But his feeling of triumph was temporary as he found himself assailed from both sides by the Legions who were waiting in the other two corridors.

"Er, take a number?" he asked the Legions, sweat forming on his brow.

"Take a number? Take a number he says," one of the Legions said derisively. "This isn't a bloody kung fu movie, I'll have you know."

Beast Boy gulped, and a split second later, ten Legions found themselves in hot pursuit of a green cheetah. Beast Boy ran desperately, the pounding of the Legions' boots seemingly never far behind, not caring where he was going until he saw light at the end of a tunnel. Following it, he found himself in the Titans' main room, the only exit being the windows facing the ocean.

At first, Beast Boy contemplated shattering the windows and finding the other Titans, a thought that he immediately shut from his mind.

He couldn't leave Raven alone.

Suddenly, the other door leading into the room glowed with dark energy before falling as if pushed by a massive force, and Raven entered, a second before the ceiling collapsed.

Raven had been busy trying to hold off Legion Prime and the clones accompanying him. Occasionally, he would send off a clone or two elsewhere, but for the most part Raven was outnumbered five to one. She cursed not being able to fly upwards; the low ceilings in the Tower made it impossible, and hovering backwards did not work either- Legion had been able to keep up with her.

Turning a corner, Raven saw the double doors into the electronics room. Unlike the furniture she had earlier thrown at her pursuers, these sturdy doors, by dint of their sheer size would make far more effective weapons. Holding her arm out, she threw it forward as soon as the doors became enveloped in energy and threw them forward.

Legion Prime grinned as two clones ran toward each door headfirst, stopping them with a loud clang. As the clones folded to the ground from the fatal injuries they suffered, the doors dropped to the ground as well, their force absorbed by the disappearing clones.

"Tut, tut, my dear Raven, is that the best you can do?" Legion Prime taunted. Placing a hand on the other two clones, he told her, "One mind, a thousand bodies. _Ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer, ja_?"

Raven flew ahead of Legion, throwing whatever she could in Legion's way to stop his relentless pursuit, but whatever she did, Legion simply used his clones to bulldoze though, displaying the same murderous indifference to his clones as he did with his victims.

Suddenly Raven heard footsteps from behind her. " 'Ullo, miss," the clone behind her said, emerging from the shadows as she spun around to face him. Behind him, a door loomed. Raven recognized it as the one leading into the main room. She enveloped the doors in her dark force, and swiftly slammed them down on the clone. It would have been comical had she been in the mood. Running into the room she saw Beast Boy at the other end.

And then the ceiling collapsed.

Blackfire wasn't faring too well as she flew from Shift. The first time she tried to blast Shift, her opponent simply turned into a puff of smoke, then to Blackfire's dismay, took the form of the starbolt's energy.

"Well, isn't that lovely? This old bitch's learned some new tricks," the glowing Shift said, as her hands glowed with starbolt fire. Blackfire desperately launched another volley at Shift, but her foe simply reabsorbed the blasts and redirected them at Blackfire.

Now she found herself running from her own starbolts as Shift, reveling in her newfound powers, fired again and again.

"What's the matter, dear heart, having a little trouble taking your own medicine?" Shift laughed.

"No, it's your ego that's a bit hard to swallow," Blackfire replied, dodging another starbolt. Turning the corner, Blackfire found herself at a dead end. Shift raised her arms to fire, and Blackfire responded in the only way she could think of.

Twin bolts issued from her eyes, blasting a hole in the floor, and she dropped through right before Shift's own bolt hit, finding herself falling through the debris of the main room ceiling and landing between a very surprised Raven and Beast Boy.

Surprisingly enough, it was Beast Boy who recovered first. "Whose idea was it to split up again?"

Blackfire opened her mouth to retort, but at that moment, the Legion clones who pursuing Raven emerged from where she had entered. Raven seized the dining table in her magic and threw it at the Legions, not noticing the ceiling above her, weakened by the force of Shift's blast breaking off and falling down towards her.

"Raven!" Beast Boy shouted, rushing to her aid. _I can't make it, it's too far, Raven please don't die, I-_

Suddenly the falling stone's progress was stopped. "Go," Blackfire told Beast Boy and Raven, as she grunted under the slab's weight, finally throwing it aside after her two comrades had moved away.

"Ooh look, this a lovely image. All together now, how sweet," Legion Prime said, emerging from the darkness of the doorway, cloning himself as he went.

"It is a wonderful thing to see, isn't it?" Shift, now looking like a normal woman, asked from above him as she looked down.

The three Titans formed into a defensive formation as the Legions started to encircle them, Shift dropping down from the ceiling and landing as lithely as a cat to face them.

For some reason, each Titan found the thought that they were most likely going to die one that was strangely comforting, tinged with a single regret.

For Raven, she knew that she could not allow these two bounty hunters to win at any cost, and if that cost was her life, then so be it. She had seen her father, in memories passed down by her mother that were so clear they might as well have been her own. Death held no fear for her anymore.

She had but one regret: that she could not act upon what she saw in her mirror…

Blackfire was silently amused at her situation. It appeared that if the Divine had a sense of humor, it was a fiendish one. To survive one last stand only to die in the next; Blackfire could appreciate the joke. Of course they could somehow survive this, just like they survived the first time, but from Blackfire knew, the universe did not grant second chances.

And that alone she mourned.

When an animal is cornered, a response known as 'flight or fight' is triggered and Beast Boy knew this intimately. He knew somewhere inside him a voice was telling him to run, to fly from all this, that to fight would be useless. And it was true. Animals are the most logical beings on the planet. Except Beast Boy was anything but logical. Corny as it sounded, he followed his heart. And his heart was with Raven.

He just wished he could have made her laugh, just once.

Unknown to all of them, their eyes narrowed at the same time. Raven was the first to speak.

"Titans…go."

And then it was like a dam had been breached.

There are none who would fight as those who have nothing left to fight for. The Romans learnt this, and built arenas to celebrate it; the Nazis learnt this too late in their war against Russia, and were defeated by it; and now it seemed that Legion and Shift were due that same lesson.

The black smoke of dying clones flew as Beast Boy ripped through their ranks. No mere bull, no meek goat faced them this time; the clones were torn limb from limb by a creature only before seen alive on the silver screen: a Velociraptor, a snarling whirlwind of claws and fangs. Beast Boy had never intentionally taken a life before, but considering what his opponents were…

"Shift! Shift! A little help would be dearly appreciated!" Legion Prime said, far behind the battlefield. He turned to retreat, but Blackfire's fist coming the other way put a stop to that.

"Not used to someone who actually fights back?" Blackfire asked, rubbing her fist in anticipation.

"Can't say I am, really," Legion agreed, as two clones crept up from behind Blackfire, machetes drawn. They raised their blades to deliver killing blows that never came as they were slammed against a wall by a piece of fallen ceiling shrouded in Raven's magic. Blackfire didn't even turn around.

Having saved her friend, Raven turned her attention back to Shift, now taking on her radiation form. "Let's see you work your sorcery on this," she sneered.

Raven did not reply. Instead, she lifted an arm and let off a magical bolt of her own, with predictable results.

Predictable, that is, for Raven.

Seeing the magic home in on her, Shift tried the tactic she had used with Blackfire, and it worked, to an extent. When she had finished, Raven found herself facing a dark cloud of her own shadow magic.

"My turn, angel," Shift said, and plunged toward Raven. At least, she tried to.

All forms of energy have their own individual properties. Magic in particular, is bound to its owner, and at that moment, Raven owned Shift.

What could have happened next no one would ever know. A clone who had escaped Beast Boy's wrath launched himself at Raven, arms outstretched. A hastily lifted rock managed to stop him permanently, but broke Raven's concentration, and an enraged Shift dropped to the ground, her flesh now flame, and advanced.

"No!" Blackfire and Legion Prime shouted, Legion Prime's collar in Blackfire's fist. Throwing him into the wall, Blackfire launched a starbolt at the incandescent Shift, and for the first time, one of the Starbolts actually had an effect when it impacted a Shift who did not transform in time, throwing her backwards into the Legions surrounding Beast Boy. This time however, there were no replacements.

Seeing Shift pick herself up from the ground, Raven decided to act on a hunch. "Blackfire!" she shouted, her hand glowing with darkness, "when I give the signal, fire- Now!"

As the two different energy bolts hit her, Shift's finely honed combat reflexes betrayed her by trying to mimic two energy forms at once. The reaction was catastrophic; a spectacular explosion that blew out the windows, and threw the Titans backward. Knocked into blissful unconsciousness by the pain, Shift dropped to the ground.

Beast Boy scanned the room, searching for more enemies, but as the red haze began to clear, as the bloodlust began to diminish, Beast Boy asked disbelievingly, "Did…did we just win?"

"Looks like it," Raven said wearily. Now that the adrenaline she never knew she had was wearing off, Raven felt exceptionally tired, and sat down on a miraculously unbroken seat she had righted up.

There was a short silence, where only the whistling of the wind and the distant sound of sirens were heard. Then Blackfire started laughing. It started as a small chuckle, then quickly rose in both level and volume as Beast Boy joined in. Raven, being Raven, just smiled.

"Hey Beast Boy," Blackfire said, during a lull in the laughter, "I have to tell you, those were some nice moves you put on Legion, nice and ruthless!"

"You weren't' so bad yourself, Blackfire," Beast Boy replied. "All those explosions, you da _bomb_!"

_That's one good thing to come out of this_, Raven thought, seeing Beast Boy and Blackfire break into raucous laughter again, for some reason.

What happened next was a combination of that laughter blocking out almost all other sounds there.

The tiredness of the Titans.

As well as the injuries suffered by Legion Prime affecting his control.

When Beast Boy opened his eyes after his latest laughing fit, the first thing his eyes focused on was the figure of Legion Prime creeping up behind Raven, one hand clutching his stomach, the other raising a leg broken off from the dining table, it was too late. When he yelled "Raven look OUT!" at the exact moment the leg came swinging down, it was too late.

A sideways blow to the head may have knocked Raven unconscious under optimum circumstances. These were not optimum circumstances, and Raven may have ended up in a coma anyway; but as it were, the leg smashed straight into the middle of her face. "No…" he whispered, dropping the leg as he stumbled backwards, his face a mixture of rage and disappointment.

Blackfire didn't bother with repartee this time. Her eyes glowed with both rage and starbolt energy as Beast Boy rushed to the side of the stricken Raven, before he too, looked up to Legion with primeval fire in his eyes.

Then he took them completely by surprise, not once but twice. "Let me save you two the trouble," he snarled, and took out his machetes. Before either Best Boy or Blackfire could react, he plunged one blade downwards into the base of his throat and the other upwards through his stomach.

His body then disappeared in a cloud of rapidly dissipating black smoke.

(scene change)

The other Titans arrived in less than a minute after Legion's 'suicide' to find Beast Boy and Blackfire on their way to the hospital.

They had been too late.


	8. Epilogue

**Epilogue: Back To The Present Future**

Blackfire turned from the hospital bed in a start, her memories of those past few days filed away again as she heard footsteps behind her. "Hey, Blackfire."

"Beast Boy, I thought you'd gone home already."

"Nah. Now that the whole place is as messy as my room, it's like I don't have any privacy anymore," he joked, before his countenance grew much more sober. "Listen, Blackfire? I know we were not really the best of friends before, but, well…?" he said, holding out an outstretched hand.

There was only the merest of hesitations before Blackfire took Beast Boy's hand in her own, grasping it firmly.

"Thanks, Blackfire." Then he let out a short breath. "And it's all thanks to Raven, isn't it? I guess…I guess we both really care about her."

That was a loaded statement, and for a moment Blackfire contemplated telling Beast Boy the truth about how she felt, about not just how much, but _how_ she cared for Raven.

And then she saw the desperate hope in Beast Boy's eyes, remembered the history those two shared, remembered how well they work together.

"It's not what you think," she lied, putting on as jovial a face as she could manage. The old Blackfire, the one who came to Earth twice on a mission of revenge, ironically, would have been the truthful one. That Blackfire had not realized that the universe, for its own cruelly fickle desires did not, would not, grant people like her happiness, or at least, happiness that lasted. Why make other people suffer? It wouldn't make her feel any better.

Not anymore anyway.

"Well, er… the thing is…you two seemed-"

"What's the matter Beast Boy? Did you want to watch?" Blackfire asked salaciously.

"What? No!" Beast Boy said, his face turning an interesting combination of green and red. "It's just that…" He sat down next to Blackfire, and an apologetic smile appeared on his face. "I guess I turned into a real green eyed monster, huh?" he sighed.

Blackfire leaned over and placed her hand on Beast Boy's shoulder. What was one more lie? Raising an eyebrow, Blackfire said in faked good humor, "Look, Beast Boy, I like Raven too, _buuut_ not in the same way you do, if you know what I mean."

"Was I that obvious?" Beast Boy asked ruefully.

Blackfire laughed. "Yes Beast Boy, yes you were," she told him. After a moment, Beast Boy started laughing as well.

But as always, their gazes were drawn back to Raven's comatose form. "Blackfire?" Beast Boy asked, breaking the silence.

"Mmm?"

"I'm sorry, really sorry for the way I acted before."

"You already apologized."

"Yeah, I know, but I just wanted to make sure."

Blackfire nodded. There didn't seem to be anything else to say.

Footsteps behind them revealed themselves to belong to a handsome, bearded doctor named "Dr. Hook?" Beast Boy asked.

"That's me," Dr. Hook confirmed in his easygoing manner as he held up some charts.

"What's is it Doc? Is there anything wrong? Please don't tell me something's wrong!" Beast Boy begged. Blackfire said nothing, but the way her face had suddenly lost its color showed that she too expected the worst.

"Whoa, whoa, hold on a minute there," Dr. Hook said, smiling. "First, let me remind you that this is a hospital, so keep the noise levels down, okay?" when Beast Boy nodded, Hook continued, "Second, I think I may have some good news. Now, I don't want to get your hopes up, but I think that Miss Raven here's going to be all right."

"What do you mean?"

Dr. Hook leaned against the wall. "The thing is, I can sorta understand what is happening here. I used to work at another hospital, and let me tell you, if _you_ think your life was strange," he laughed. "That's how I can understand these."

He handed over a few charts to Blackfire and Beast Boy, as he clarified, "The first set of scans show that there were massive injuries to Raven's skull as well as her brain. Now, that was the first thing that alerted me to the fact that there was something going on here- a normal person would not be able to survive that kind of punishment. Miss Blackfire, wasn't it?"

"Yes?"

"You said before that Raven used some sort of healing magic on you, that she uses it on a fairly regular basis, right?"

"That's correct," Blackfire said cautiously, not knowing where this was going.

As an answer, Hook gave them a few more charts. "Take a look at these. I had Raven's brain scanned twice, once as soon as I could after you brought her in, another just before you came in here tonight. Less than two hours apart, and already, you can see that there has been some improvement."

"You're saying Raven's healing herself?" Beast Boy asked. Despite Dr. Hook's earlier warning, hope began to infuse him.

"That's what it looks like. My conservative estimate? At the rate's she's going, she could be out of the hospital in a week or so. But, if it is as I think, and that the healing process will accelerate as more of her regenerates, well then, she would be back with you guys as soon as tomorrow afternoon."

Dr. Hook sometimes questioned the reasons he became a doctor. He saw so much death, so much sickness (sometimes caused by his fellow doctors; one named Stegman automatically flashed in his mind), that he sometimes felt as if he should have done something else, perhaps continued with his college band. But then he remembered his wife, and he saw expressions on people's faces like what he saw on Beast Boy's and Blackfire's, and it was all worthwhile.

(scene change)

"Hey, you! Yeah, don't I get a bloody phone call?" Shift shouted at the prison guard through the intercom in her specially constructed cell. Normally, a prison, no matter how sturdily built would have definitely not been able to hold her like this, but as it turned out, inhibition collars work just as well on humans as it does on Tameranians.

The guard, well outside the range of whatever Shift would have been able to throw at him anyway, pressed a few buttons on his console, and on the keypad of the intercom in Shift's cell, a touchpad lighted up, revealing a normal telephone pad.

_Dial thisss number if ever you ssshould find yourssself in difficulty_, the growling hiss told her on the first day it called, and was Shift ever in trouble now.

She heard the phone ring: once, twice, three times, then someone answered. "You called thisss number," the same growling hiss stated.

"Yeah, that's right. Look, I need your help-"

"You do not dessserve it."

Shift's mouth was agape. She could not believe what she was hearing. "What the hell did you say! Look, you stupid bastard-"

"I will ssspeak, and you ssshall lisssten. You have failed me. You have allowed yourssself to fail. What makesss you think I will help you at all?"

"But…but this number…"

"Wasss never meant to be usssed. In fact, it wasss never needed. I would have known perfectly well if you had failed, and even ssso, I would have never helped you." There was the sound of something clicking, as if someone had removed something from the mouthpiece. "What can I say, treachery's in my blood," the voice said in a more normal manner.

And in a much more recognizable voice.

"Legion?" Shift whispered.

"Ta-ta." Legion said. They were the last words Shift had ever heard from him, and as the new automated equipment arrived to replace the guard, for whom it was a temporary posting anyway, the last words she heard from anyone for a long time.

(scene change)

Legion stood in the dank apartment, handphone in hand. He crushed it, with the strength that came so easily to his kind, and threw it into the waste bin. It was a cloned handphone, so it probably couldn't be traced, but why take chances?

Besides, he had other things to worry about. He was present at the Puppet King's punishment, and he knew, from centuries of service, his lord Trigon's temper, and his perfectionism.

He was not the sort of being who would suffer fools gladly. Legion grasped his brow as it creased, and beads of sweat brought on by terror trailed down.

No, he wasn't that sort of being at all.

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:**

I have given this story the once over, and I have realized that this story was severely lacking in humor. Therefore, I have decided to follow this little fable up with 'Frightanic', with the manner in which Mad Mod and Jinx escape America and that occurs at the same time this one does.

Please, bear with me on this.

Pretty please?


End file.
